


Aftermath

by CuteAsAMuntin



Series: Before and After [3]
Category: Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Peter Parker, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Background Character Death, Bottom Wade Wilson, Canon-Typical Violence, Deadpool Thought Boxes, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Human Experimentation, Improper Use of Web-Shooters, Light Angst, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Gore, Omega Verse, Omega Wade Wilson, Past Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy, Past Wade Wilson/Vanessa Carlysle - Freeform, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Pining Wade Wilson, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SHIELD, Semi-Public Sex, Top Peter Parker, Top Peter Parker/Bottom Wade Wilson, Wade Wilson Needs A Hug, Weapon X Project
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:33:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuteAsAMuntin/pseuds/CuteAsAMuntin
Summary: Before Weapon X, Wade Wilson loved being an Omega. Before he killed Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker loved being an Alpha.Now, someone is replicating the Green Goblin's old experiments and trying to transform Betas and Omegas into Alphas. Peter failed both Norman and Harry Osborn; it's his responsibility to stop whoever has picked up where they left off. Wade missed a few people when cleaning house at Department K, and he knows that this project might not have gotten off the ground if he'd been more careful.Can Spider-Man and Deadpool work together to solve this case without getting into a quip-off every time they meet up? Will they have to face their issues, or will they be able to conveniently ignore their emotional trauma and queer angst? Just how many times will White and Yellow catch Wade ogling the Spider-butt?- - -Status update [12/01/20]:I "won" NaNoWriMo getting through a huge chunk ofAftermath! I have about 4 chapters left, and I'm waiting to post until I get through the whole editing process, as I've ended up making some minor changes to the earlier chapters and splitting up chapter 7, since it was so long.
Relationships: Fantastic Four (Team) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Series: Before and After [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748596
Comments: 48
Kudos: 98





	1. Just Checking In

**Author's Note:**

> Why am I posting the first chapter before I finish the fic, Z"L me
> 
> 『White』 |「Yellow」  
> If you want to check out my notes on society, sex, and gender in this particular Omegaverse, I have a Google Doc available [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BUTK6GGcbwLecMDX0MpPfeaNZf6K0lhkC12pW9yQ7ms/edit?usp=sharing).
> 
> Thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for beta reading!

Before the cancer, before Department K and Weapon X, before Hospice and Dr. Killebrew, when he was just Wade Winston Wilson, ex-Special Forces gun-for-hire, Deadpool was pretty sure that he had loved being an Omega. He had loved sharing his heats with whatever hot and willing (and when he was still pretty, they were always willing) Alpha — or even the occasional particularly adventurous Beta — he had his eye on. Had later loved being mated and then fully Bonded to Vanessa Carlysle, the sharpest, most gorgeous Alpha he’d ever cared to lay eyes on, who had treated him like he was strong and valuable and worthy even when he wasn’t behind a sniper scope or in the peak of a heat.

Before his flesh was little more than layer on aching layer of scar tissue, before his brains had been scrambled and he’d been graced with the occasional appearance of the boxes. Before Weapon X had gotten ahold of Vanessa, broken their bond, done fuck-knows-what to her to kick her mutation to a whole new level, brute-forced her into honing her fighting skills, and fucked up her memories too in their drive to enhance her metamorph powers and train her into another useful tool. One that could control or take out Deadpool.

Before he lost the few truly sweet and good and uncomplicated things in his life. Before the idea of trying to find another person who wouldn’t be sick at the sight of him the moment he took off his mask, no matter how fuckable he smelled at peak heat, sent him spiraling into an anxiety attack. Before even the idea of _wanting_ to find someone who could help him through a heat without vomiting or making him keep the whole suit on made him panic even worse than needles or the smell of iodine and rubbing alcohol. Before the scents of most Alphas and of other Omegas near a heat made him near sick himself when they got too strong or too close. Before he comforted and punished himself by clinging to the faint sense-memory of Vanessa’s scent covering him like it was a security blanket in fear he might forget that too. Before refusing to let his guard down not matter who he was fucking. Before lonely, frantic heats were reminders of what he had lost and was fairly certain he wanted nothing to do with again, Wade had loved being an Omega.

After, he was glad that with his size and his reputation and his scent blockers in the Deadpool suit, most people assumed that the occasionally-SHIELD-contracted mercenary was — along with being unpredictable, violent, obnoxious, and a complete whack-job — a total Alpha knothead, or at the very least an overconfident, oversized Beta male. Not that Deadpool hid his gender, per se, but the obfuscation was certainly useful, both on his rare occasions of recreational social contact and when he could use the moment of surprise as another tool on a job.

\- - -

Say, for instance, Wade was infiltrating an Oscorp lab rumored to have some strangely unaccounted for funding and black box projects. Say this lab employed a few researchers whose names were never quite associated with Weapon X, but had cropped up a little too often as co-authors on Doctor Killebrew’s old research papers to be entirely coincidental. And say, for instance, he was not only tasked with a little recon and retrieval mission by a private employer, but guaranteed to retain his fee if he were to act with prejudice if in the course of the job he came across his own personal mission. Just say, for example, if he was contemplating a semi-legitimate secondary contract but hadn’t necessarily committed to anything just yet. Perhaps he was considering an extra paycheck and a little shred of legitimacy if he just so happened to find evidence of research into manipulation of genetic markers for gender presentation, with a little slash and burn bonus if he caught even a whiff of human experimentation, as long as he collected all the evidence and performed rescues or mercy killings as appropriate. He’d heard about that little Green Goblin SNAFU that had happened in New York while he’d been away, and while Oscorp had managed to officially remain unaffiliated and untainted by the Osborn family’s downward spiral, word on the street was that SHIELD wasn’t completely stupid, even without their cyclops of a director.

『You really think throwing Preston or Hill a little bone will be enough to convince them you should be able to take on legit contracts? How are you still so dumb?』

Wade shook his head a little to clear it. Sure, he might have been cutting it a little close to his next heat, but he’d learned to deal with the discomfort and almost never had panic attacks around them anymore. At worst, he’d just be light-headed, uncomfortably horny, and maybe a bit distractingly attractive-smelling on his way home from this mission. At best, he had the advantage of being able to calm any Omega and sway any Alphas that might be trapped in the deeper levels of the lab. He might have even just a little more leeway in distracting and manipulating the Alpha security (and he was almost positive they would be mostly Alphas and probably all men because some stereotypes just still wouldn’t shake), which would be worth it. And speak of the devil…

「It’s showtime.」

Deadpool slipped from the shadows.

\- - -

Before he murdered his Omega, Spider-Man had loved being an Alpha.

Before he had snapped Gwen Stacy’s neck, before his failure against Doctor Octavius left her father crushed by a building, before he lost to the Green Goblin and killed his best friend’s father, when he was just your friendly neighborhood Peter Parker, Spider-Man had loved everything about being an Alpha. He was thrilled when he finally presented freshman year and proved that nerdy little “Puny” Parker was more than meets the eye (and hadn’t that just been convenient a little over a year later when that spider bite left him with too-tight sweater vests over a new six-pack, an uncanny ability to avoid Flash Thompson, and a useless pair of glasses). Even when Uncle Ben had been shot in front of him because he was young and angry and too cocky with his newfound powers, the responsibility of being the Alpha of the house and being there for May had been enough to help him through his grief and out the other side. He’d wanted to be someone Ben could have been proud of, whether he was using his powers or not.

Before, he hadn’t even really minded the struggle to balance his time between his studies at Empire State University with regular patrols around New York and freelancing at _The Bugle_. He had prided himself on being an Alpha that people knew they could trust to walk them home at night, or to spend his days between classes standing guard and studying in a dorm common room and warning off other Alphas while single Omegas rode their heats out safely in the adjoining, locked bedrooms. Had marveled over the honor of being asked to help Gwen, the most intelligent, quick-witted, beautiful person he knew, through a heat for the first time. Had loved dating Gwen even when it was even more difficult to balance his life and his vigilante career as New York’s least-favorite wall-crawler when he wanted to spend all his time with his face buried in her hair, breathing in their mingled scents and listening to her talk about her research and thinking about how desperately he wanted to mate with her before she left to study in Oxford.

Before the Goblin formula warped Norman Osborn into the Green Goblin, because being a brilliant scientist and powerful CEO and one of the richest men in the world wasn’t enough for him; the Beta had to try to find a way to become an Alpha too, to be top of the social pecking order in every way conceivable. Before the Green Goblin figured out who Peter was, before he kidnapped Gwen and Spider-Man wasn’t smart enough or fast enough to save her when she was tossed off that bridge. Before the webslinger wasn’t fast enough to save both himself and Osborn when the villain had remote-controlled the Goblin Glider in an attempt to skewer Spider-Man and had ended up pinned to the stone himself instead.

Before Peter Parker wasn’t strong enough to carry Harry Osborn through the desolation he had caused. Before Harry started coping with his obsession over his father’s death at Spider-Man’s hands with benzos and expensive whiskey and elaborate rants about the web-slinging menace that rivaled those of J. Jonah Jameson. Before his mood swings and grief-induced paranoia led Harry to accuse Peter of abandoning him because he was “just a Beta” in favor of “being a big, bad Alpha,” while the hero was barely stumbling through his schoolwork, much less secret vigilante patrols, while mourning Gwen and Captain Stacy and Norman, all of whom he’d failed so horribly. Before Harry stumbled onto both the Green Goblin’s and Spider-Man’s true identities. Before Spider-Man doomed another person, and before he had to defeat a younger, bitter Green Goblin. Before Peter had to watch his best friend be institutionalized, possibly permanently.

After he lost everything that made life outside school, Aunt May, and Spider-Man feel like it mattered, he’d needed a way to keep other people’s scents from overwhelming him when all his senses were dialed up to eleven on patrol. The first time he tried to go back out after Gwen, he’d had a panic attack at the first wave of metallic, sour fear and distress pouring off an Omega being mugged. Spider-Man was barely able to help the man before he was being violently sick in a dumpster, unable to stop the sense memory of his webs going unbearably taut and then slack; he had been overwhelmed by his pulse jackhammering in recollection of the way Gwen’s terror had set his adrenaline rushing in the same way this man’s panic was now. The agitation of grief and anger coming off him when he pulled his mask up a little too far was enough to send the freshly-rescued Omega skittering back in renewed fear. It had been another week after that before he’d dared to try another patrol.

After, it was also safer and less distressing for everyone else when he started to double up on his normal application of a scent-blocker by lining his suit and mask with two-way scent filters. He’d thought about trying out Alpha suppressants again too, but they didn’t seem to work right with his body since the bite, and the idea of going through a chemically-induced rut when he could still smell _her_ in his bed and knew she was never coming back was worse than having to smell a hundred frightened Omegas. This also served to keep his scent away from others, both to better hide his civilian identity and because he just wasn’t as good at controlling his stronger emotions anymore. It no longer took a flashback to Gwen or a hit from Rhino cracking half his ribs and smashing him through a wall before he was spilling out pheromones that would put the most even-tempered Beta on edge.

After, he developed a habit of checking his suit and mask twice for tears and ensuring that his mask filters were fully functional before patrolling, and sometimes had to call it a night early if either was damaged enough. It was far safer and less distressing for everyone if his scent wasn’t adding fuel to the fire. Luckily, Peter Parker didn’t tend to run into many situations more trying than focusing a microscope or corralling the occasional unruly undergrad, but for Spider-Man, creating another barrier between himself and the world has become a necessity.

\- - -

He adjusted the edges of his gloves one more time, then checked his lens’ heads-up display for current filter efficiency. He’d have to switch the ones in his mask out again before his next night of patrol, just to be safe, but they would be fine for a routine reconnaissance of OsCorp’s “secret” lower-level labs and his regular nightly swing through the city. The company had managed to avoid any culpability in Norman’s stint as the Green Goblin or his death, but Spider-Man had been everywhere in the Osborn penthouse (on and off the blueprints registered with the city), and there were no clean rooms or labs there with adequate equipment to create the Goblin serum. As far as Peter Parker’s normal visits and Spider-Man’s after-hours check-ins could ascertain, Harry Osborn had been toeing the line and was even responding to therapy. Nonetheless, it couldn’t hurt to be too careful.

After one last roll of his shoulders, Spider-Man dropped down into the elevator shaft. With a few taps and murmured commands, the security camera locations, building blueprints, and his own LiDAR and radio backscatter for parts of the undocumented below-ground labs he hadn’t finished mapping out yet were overlaid on his lens HUD. He hadn’t seen anything but aboveboard, perfectly ethical, human experimentation-free work even in the subbasement testing areas of Oscorp since the Green Goblin events, so he expected an hour or so of light recon before he got onto the evening’s real patrol. He did not expect the faint tingle of his spidey sense across the back of his neck for the first twenty minutes of his crawlthrough, followed by what felt like a minor earthquake. He also did not expect to be halted four floors deep in the not-so-secret labs by his spidey-sense screaming at him to leap back as bullets fired into the cramped ductwork, followed by screaming and the pungent, unmistakable stench of blood and urine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for betaing!


	2. Fetch Quest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wade is being paid to pick up a few things. If he's lucky, he'll get to do some canon-typical violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 『White』 |「Yellow」

Wade unsheathed a knife from his belt as he crept up behind the lone guard unlucky enough to be the first person in his way that night. He almost gagged at the overwhelming scent of cheap aftershave coming off the man.

『At least that Axe he’s wearing is probably strong enough that we won’t have to smell anyone’s uber-Alpha bullshit on this entire floor.』

Wade nodded with a thoughtful grimace as he covered the guard’s mouth with one hand and slit his throat with the other. He had to agree with that assessment.

The ground level, basement parking lot, and first two subbasement levels of labs, which were all on publicly-available blueprints for Oscorp Tower, had fairly standard security measures: a few guards per floor on synchronized rounds and cameras trained on main hallways and sensitive areas. Aside from the guards, who were easily evaded, these floors were totally empty so late at night. Entering the property after hours without triggering any alarms in the first place had been a joke. Wade’s skills hadn’t been tested at all until he approached the entrance to the third, “secret” subbasement lab level, where, as the information from his employer at Horizon Labs had predicted, things got marginally more interesting.

The body spray-drenched security guard had been the first person to get in Wade’s way all night. Although if he was being honest with himself, the merc more than hoped he wouldn’t be the last. His mouth stretched in a feral grin under his leather-and-kevlar mask as he continued down the service hallway. Some people just got really horny or craved weird food when they were in pre-heat, but he’d always gotten antsy and a little extra violent.

“Let’s see, left at the second supply closet, yup. Right at the dead body, check. Scooch up right under the security camera and disable it, let’s see… Uhhh, got it. What am I missing?”

「Must. Resist urge. To sing. Off-key spying theme music.」

『No one will buy Deadpool obscurely referencing The Emperor’s New Groove. We’re not even the one here who’s technically a Disney character.』

“Oh, right. The door. The door to the secret lab, the lab I’m supposed to be infiltrating in exchange for money, the secret lab door. That door.” Wade expertly ignored the boxes’ commentary and looked at the camera he had just disabled, then at the clearly marked fire exit across from it. Fire exits didn’t normally have keycard locks and thumbprint scans rigged into the alarm systems.

“Man, I’m so glad I grabbed a few souvenirs off Tapout McOldSpice back there. I really didn’t want to have to go looking for another guard.” He pulled an ID card and a bloody stump of a thumb out of a belt pouch, swiping them against the appropriate scanners one after the other. The lights blinked a baleful yellow, and the devices each emitted a flat beeping. He tried again in the opposite order, then simultaneously, with the same result. “Are you fucking kidding me? Fine!”

With one heavily-booted foot, Wade smashed into the door’s push-bar. With the opposite hand, he pulled his Sig P320 from its shoulder holster and shot the uncooperative scanners, then the alarm for good measure. The wide grin returned to his masked face as he slipped through the now-defunct door to the hidden stairwell. If there hadn’t been a welcoming party waiting for him before, there certainly should be now.

「Our way is more fun anyway.」

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the Sig was stowed and he was debating between the benefits of trying to regain a few stealth points by breaking in the twins and just jumping right into using the pistols that were still strapped safely into their holsters. He still hadn’t decided which approach to use when he cracked open the level three door. He was greeted by a rush of air from an overhead duct and the far-off whir of machinery, but the landing hallway was otherwise silent. He must have gotten lucky and somehow managed not to set off any alarms thus far.

『Unless they don’t have any alarms down here, which would be stupid. Or they’re already off for some other reason.』

He cocked his head to the left and listened harder. He could hear, very faintly, the rustle and hum of human activity and excitingly breakable equipment around and below him. With the door to the stairwell shut, he probably wouldn’t be able to detect any indication of the giant, normal-bustling office building towering stories above him.

『That makes sense, if you’re getting rich off top-secret experiments that other people want to steal.』

「Especially experiments that involve super fun amounts of screaming.」

Wade grimaced and tried not to shudder at the thought. “Well luckily Stone isn’t stupid enough to one, hire me for data recovery on projects that involve unwilling participants; B, stop me from the side quest I’m going to have to go on if I find any wacko mad scientist bullshit; or lastly, try to weasel—”

「Heh, Weasel. I kinda miss that slimeball.」

“—his way out of paying me if it turns out that a little extracurricular bloodbath is in order.”

At that point, he finally exited the stairwell fully, shutting the door behind himself as he automatically scanned the visible hallway branches for camera lines-of-sight and the most likely patrol patterns of the undoubtedly beefed-up security on these lower levels. He sprinted across the tiled floor to the nearest camera, flipped a sturdy butterfly knife into his hand, and reached up to deftly cut the fiber optic cable feeding the image back to the control room without disrupting the power cord or camera housing in a repeat of his takedown of the camera one level above. With that, the drinking fountain alcove a few yards down the hallway, toward which he silently moved, became a partially-protected blindspot from which Wade could plan the next few steps of his infiltration.

『Which is a really weird phrase. Feels wrong to say, almost. “Wade Wilson” and “planning” should never be found in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence.』

「Unless that sentence includes the phrase “planning to kill Wade Wilson.” Which I’m not opposed to, for the record.」

『Something about this whole set-up is hinting that maybe that info from Dr. Stone was a little hinky. This is already even easier than it really should be.』

Wade ducked back down, still on high alert. He had expected _some_ sort of active impediment by now, at least in the way of an alarm and an automatic gate or two, however little good that would have done. Was it really possible that he, somehow, still hadn’t tripped anything? If it was a frame-up, that blowhard Tiberius and his whole shitty lab (up to and including that smarter, browner Doogie Howser-type kid)—

『Oh, and his whole dumb secret organization of ninja buddies that it is _totally not obvious_ he’s a member of.』

Yeah, Tiberius was going to be real fucking sorry.

The thought cheered him enormously. He skipped down the stark white halls, the only noise the buzzing of the lights and the squeak of his boots on the asbestos tile. The main hallway branched several times, and his first three attempts were dead-ends leading to what looked like a mix of administrative offices, physics labs, and oversized chemistry playsets. The fourth hallway he tried ended in a wind tunnel, of all things. The fifth hallway ended in a T-intersection.

“Seriously, is there no emergency exit map in this place? What happens if there’s a fire?” he queried into the aether. To be fair, a fire was a much more imminent possibility, now that he had entered the building. Not that it would affect him too much either way. With a shrug, he took the left path. As luck would have it, that was a bad choice— for the break room full of off-duty lab technicians and security personnel he ambled into, that is. The quiet murmur of over-caffeinated, underpaid graveyard shift conversation ground to a startled halt.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Wade exclaimed brightly. “You guys should really have at least a keycard lock on your break room doors too, I mean seriously. Do you know what kind of people could just waltz right into this place?” He shook his head. “I mean, what’s the point of all those fancy locking mechanisms and biometric scanners on all your labs out there if someone can just pop right on in here and scoop out all the eyeballs they need?”

A mousy man in an oversized lab coat fell off his chair with a squeak. Then the shooting started. Wade cackled as he unholstered his own weapons once again, and he barely bothered to dodge as he joined in the fray. The lab rats wisely scurried for cover— a mystery what good they thought that would do them— behind tables, vending machines, and each other.

「Ooh, vending machines! Can we get a snack while we’re here? I’m hungry.」

『Why are you always hungry in the middle of shoot-outs?』

「Watching him shoot people makes me hungry. Also that vending machine has those Hershey Cookies and Cream candy bars, and I’ve had a weirdly intense craving for them that _somebody_ keeps ignoring.」

『I wish you could both get shot and stay down.』

The guards, who seemed to have at least minimal training in handling super-powered weirdoes in masks, wasted no time in laying down suppressive fire. If he’d been a little less durable or a little more worried about injuring any of the unarmed people in the room, it even might have been effective in slowing Wade down.

As it was, he’d only taken a handful of bullets before he’d taken down everyone with a weapon. Without looking away from the cowering technicians, he fired off a round in the direction of the doorway he’d come in through. From the scream, it sounded like he’d actually hit the idiot making a run for it. Good for him.

“You all wanna be like that guy?” he snarled at the survivors. The ones brave enough to look up when he started talking jerked back, and most of them shook their heads. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. If you sit tight in here for another hour before trying to call anyone or leaving, nothing bad is gonna happen to you. I mean, y’know, at least not from me, tonight. Statistically, other bad things are going to happen to you, but they probably won’t be my fault. Anyway, we good?”

“How do we know you’re not going to just kill us all anyway?” a woman piped up a few feet away from him. She smelled just as pants-pissing scared as the rest of them, but there was a strong undercurrent of Alpha protectiveness that made Wade’s stomach churn as much as it made him sort of want to stand nearer to her, this close to his heat. He should shoot her just on principle. Instead, he just smiled sweetly through his mask.

“Well, you’ll just have to trust me, and trust each other not to do anything real fucking dumb, huh?” The sound of a body dragging toward the door was loud in the otherwise silent room. Wade whirled around and shot the lab rat he’d previously wounded dead in the eye. Several people screamed, and someone in the back of the room vomited noisily. “Like that. Don’t do that. Be good while Daddypool does his job, and you’ll be fine. Bye-bye now. Mwah!”

With a dramatic air kiss, which for some reason seemed to disturb a few of them more than the gunshot had, Wade busied himself with snagging a couple keycards off downed security guards, dropping them into the same pouch storing the one he’d gone for on the level above and hoping that these would prove marginally more useful than that had been, and backed out of the room. He holstered his left pistol and casually hooked the fingers of that hand into the collar of the attempted escape artist to drag the body from the room with him. He kept his other gun trained on the mouthy Alpha woman near the front of the room until the door shut behind him.

\- - -

Wade dropped the corpse on the tile just in front of the break room. No reason to drag it any farther than he needed to. He snapped open another small pouch on his belt and dropped the dead idiot’s ID card inside, then tugged a small knife from his boot to collect thumbs and index fingers to store with it. He pulled open the body’s unmangled eye, thoughtfully returning its blank stare as he tilted the head back and forth. He spread the eye’s upper and lower lids to make a few careful incisions. With a deft swipe of his thumb, the orb popped free and was left hanging by the optic nerve, which he did his best to cut without tugging on the eyeball at all.

「That went well.」

『Eyeballs are gross. C’mon, even you gotta think this is gross.』

「I don’t know. I’m a little turned on right now. I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me.」

『I fucking hate you.』

“Shoulda grabbed some Tupperware while I was in there,” he muttered with a shrug while wiping the knife blade clean on the formerly-pristine lapels of the white lab coat. The eyeballs, now wrapped lightly in a square cut from the dead man’s t-shirt, were dropped gingerly into the pouch, which he left unsnapped.

Wade strolled through the rest of the third level labs in considerably better spirits. After all that gunplay, he felt like his knives might be getting a little jealous. Just in case, he pulled out a butterfly knife, not stopping in his ongoing search.

『Alright seriously, was every single security guard taking a break at the same time? Why is no one actually patrolling this lab?』

His grip on the balisong still clutched in his left hand tightened. That was definitely weird, and had him back to questioning his client’s intel and motives. He knew he should have negotiated higher terms on the job when Patch handed it over him. Now it was just more work to do once he got out of this place, which was, quite frankly, starting to give him the heebie-jeebies with all the empty hallways and the flickering lights and the sound of heavy boots approaching. Wait, heavy boots?

“Ugh, finally.” The knife went back into a belt pouch, and he had a PPQ gripped in each hand before the guard rounded the corner. The Walthers might not be as shiny and nice as his Desert Eagles, but he was getting paid for a simple retrieval, not to stand around looking pretty and intimidating. He was throwing a little of that in for free anyway, but with his luscious figure, that just couldn’t be helped. All that leather had to be good for something.

\- - -

As the heavy-booted guard came fully into view, the mercenary leaned around the edge of the alcove and rapidly squeezed off both triggers before the man had a chance to react. The body toppled backward in a boneless heap in relative silence.

『You think we’re going to have to worry about running out of ammo in this fic?』

Wade ignored the box floating insistently in front of him. There were still no alarms, so he must have scared that roomful of lab rats pretty thoroughly. Still, even if he hadn’t been in view of a camera, the dropped body was. Someone was going to notice that eventually. Well, might as well have a little fun while he was looking for what he needed. And he _had_ brought plenty of ammo, thank you very much.

『And like twice as many grenades as you really needed. You two have a problem.』

「Excuse me, I don’t have a problem. I have a _hobby_.」

The mutant perked up considerably at the idea. A good explosion after the retrieval was successful would put his night right back on track. Well, the quicker he found that server room, the quicker he could cause even more property damage and head out to get paid. Fuck the alarms, fuck the cameras, and fuck this ninja shit. This was _boring_. If Stone had cared that much about discretion, then Patch wouldn’t have handed the job to Wade in the first place.

Wade turned back toward the right-hand hall, the only place left in his sweep of the third level. He strode purposefully down the once again silent hallway. Hopefully the eye still jostling around his belt pouch remained adequately undamaged to open up any iris or retinal scanners between him and his destination. He didn’t want to blow up any doors too early and risk losing the data he was being paid to retrieve, especially if it meant he might also lose the opportunity to collect more personally-relevant data.

The red-clad mercenary gingerly plucked the ID card, fingers, and still-wrapped eyeball from his belt. He stopped in front of the locked, vault-like door, which, as expected, appeared to have several different scanners attached. To his relief, swiping the keycard gave him a green light instead of a red one on the first scanner and a high-pitched chirp, although the light on the door itself remained yellow. The thumbprint was likewise accepted with a cheerful beep.

“Man, they really don’t mess around here,” he muttered. He unwrapped the eye, brushing off a few pieces of lint, and carefully held it up to the corresponding scanner. Nothing happened.

“Aw crap,” he complained, bringing the pupil level with his own and inspecting it. A curling hair was plastered across the iris, which he peeled away and wiped absently on his leg. He placed the eye in front of the scanner again, tilting it to approximate the angle of someone bending over to reach the lens. This time, it read perfectly, and as the light turned green, so did the light on the vault door, which also emitted a rising chime as it slid open to reveal a cramped office with two empty desks, several screens showing green and black text connected to a tangled mess of cables, and a cracked door from which was coming a bright light and a steady, low stream of air.

「Finally.」

『Get to work, Freddy Krueger.』

Wade bypassed the desks entirely and moved forward into the brightly-lit room beyond to search for a computer technician to threaten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


	3. You Again?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon-typical threats of violence. Violence. Pool-O-Vision™. "You again?!"
> 
> Give it a rest, buddy.
> 
> 『White』 |「Yellow」 <\- for folks with work skins turned off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to [Vixen13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixen13/pseuds/Vixen13), who is a treasure and a gift, for assisting me with CSS for The Boxes after I spent 3 weeks completely failing at it.

Luckily for Wade, he didn’t have to search too far once he entered the server room. Only a few rows into the extensive storage space, he found a blonde Beta man assisting a purple-haired Omega woman with what looked like an annoying number of fiddly screws and wires behind a wheeled server rack.

The two computer engineers were chatting quietly as they worked, oblivious to any outside sounds under the white noise of the blowing air-conditioning vents surrounding them and buzzing fluorescent lights above. Not that Wade could blame them for not exactly being on the alert. They probably didn’t normally get too many visitors in the middle of the night, especially of his outstanding caliber.

He prowled silently around the next row of racks and leaned up against the case right behind the man while the two were leaned over a drive on one of the lowest shelves. Unhooking a frag grenade from his belt and adopting a casual pose, he waited for them to straighten up.

「The absolute drama.」

“Hey there! Glad to see that Oscorp takes its cable management so seriously. I hate to interrupt your fine work, but as it turns out, your boss has some stuff I need. And guess what? You lucky ducks get to help me find it!” Wade chirped with a mad grin plastered across his mask, tossing the grenade in the air like a softball. The technicians’ faces went white, and their eyes were unable to choose a focus between the bouncing explosive and Wade’s heavily-armed figure.

“You wanna play catch?” He made as if to lob the grenade in their direction. The purple-haired woman let out a squeak as she flailed away and spilled out of her crouch onto the smooth concrete floor. Wade barked out a laugh. “Sorry, recess is over. Why don’t we head back into your office. I can tell you what I need, and you can show me where to find it.”

“O-or what?” the blonde man stuttered out.

“Or I hamstring you and this young lady gets her ass off the floor and gets to take a turn. You ever see someone’s calf muscle roll right up like a Roman window shade? Feels super weird, lemme tell ya,” the mercenary responded evenly.

The Beta swallowed hard, eyes darting between the grenade Wade was still tossing back forth and the woman still sprawled on the floor. “Okay,” he whispered. The woman nodded in silence.

“Great! Now both of you, turn and face the rack and put your hands behind your back. Oh hey, I rhymed! Merc with a mouth earning his moniker over here.”

The pair complied with relative speed. At least Oscorp didn’t hire total idiots, although clearly he’d have to be on the lookout for any panic switches they might be able to trip. He busied himself with cuffing the woman’s wrists together in a prayer position behind her back, then doing the same to the man. He drew one gun from its holster, ensuring the two were both able to catch a glimpse of it before he gave further instructions.

He led them back to the office he’d gone through to reach the server room, then busied himself with securing them to the rolling office chairs one at a time, binding their torsos first and then securing their ankles well away from the ground. He swallowed hard at the increased pounding of his heart as his adrenaline start to rush in response to the stress and fear coming off them in waves.

“Okay, who wants to share their password and tell me how to find what I need?” Wade asked brightly.

“It, uh…” the woman trailed off weakly, clearing her throat several times and looking away. “It’s a password and a thumbprint.” She jerked her chin at the odd-looking device connected to the side of one of the keyboards.

“Christ, you people are way too into biometric security measures here. Better hope Doc Connors gets his shit figured out before too many of you end up missing body parts every time some corporate espionage goes ugly. So who’s helping?” He whirled the man’s chair around and slammed it back against the nearest desk, yanking the Beta’s cuffed hands back and pinning them to the desk with a knife.

“Great, thanks for volunteering.” Wade flipped the keyboard upside down to press the divide attached to the side against the man’s left thumb. He poised his fingers above the keys. “Password?”

“It’s, um, it’s just long for the security and it needed to be something I would remember, but it’s Stucky5ever. The S is capitalized.” Somehow, the man still had the emotional bandwidth to look somewhat embarrassed.

“You know what? Not even gonna ask,” Wade muttered as he dutifully typed in each letter. “Now let’s get me what I need so I can get out of here and get paid.”

「I’m _bored_. Can’t we just use one little grenade?」

Between them, the two computer engineers verbally directed Wade through their digital file storage to the particular telecommunications project that Horizon Labs was looking to get ahold of.

『To be fair, it’s really probably just Stone trying to get ahead and look good, not the whole lab.』

“Will you shut up? If you shut up, we can blow up a whole building later,” Wade hissed under his breath, ignoring the newly-alarmed looks cast in his direction.

「Promise?」

『The bar is so low. Ugh, fine. Promise?』

Wade jerked his head in assent, and the chattering boxes over his head head (which grated on him more than the constant ache and burn of his flesh on some days) went mercifully blank for the moment.

The computer engineer quickly provided him with the documents, along with the information to unlock the encrypted files, which was helpfully loaded onto a preexisting thumb drive that the mutant promptly pocketed. They continued to cooperate up until he demanded that they help him wipe the files from their server.

“What? You can’t do that!” the blonde spluttered. “Take all the copies you want, but I don’t want to be guaranteed to lose my job on top of everything else!” Wade pulled his KA-BAR from its sheath with a shark-like grin, pointing the blade at the man’s eye.

“That right?” He leaned over and slammed the blade through the Beta’s hand and into the wooden desk, wiggling it back and forth a little as the man screamed. The crotch of the blonde’s pants darkened, and the acrid scent of urine filled the enclosed space. The fresh wave of terrified pheromones following close behind ratcheted up Wade’s heartbeat again. “How about now?”

“O-okay,” the man barely managed to gasp out. The woman whimpered softly, and the Omega scent carried along with her fear made Wade start to feel sick. He gritted his teeth against it.

As the engineers began to give him a fresh set of instructions in wavering voices, Wade clicked through a few folders at random, browsing for data that might be of interest either for sale or for his own personal mission that had made him so eager to pick up this job in the first place.

While scrolling through what appeared to be a drive partition dedicated to the medical and biotech lab data, Wade paused. He paled with recognition under his mask. Would those so-called doctors really be cocky and stupid enough to use their real names while working on morally-disreputable projects in a covert underground lab for a company with a reputation currently under scrutiny? The answer appeared to be affirmative, if the .mov file he pulled up at random— a thankfully soundless video of what appeared to be a vivisection of a subject who lost consciousness halfway through— was any indication.

『Hey look, I think I recognize that guy! He was there when we showed up, wasn’t he? Very imaginative.』

「Helped make your outsides just as horrifying as your insides! I was impressed, personally. Did some fun stuff to your insides too.」

“Fuck. You know what? I just like it so much here, I think I’m going to stay a little while longer. Wouldn’t want to miss out on the best part of the behind-the-scenes tour,” Wade ground out between gritted teeth, digging the KA-BAR’s blade another inch into the sturdy desk and enjoying the feel of the man’s pinned, fragile metacarpals rasping against the steel. The Beta screamed again, his voice ragged and hoarse.

The captive techs ducked their heads, visibly shaking. The man looked like he was about vomit and pass out, though not necessarily in that order. Wade took a modicum of pity on him, turning his attention to the purple-haired Omega woman instead. She was more likely to be useful at this point anyway. Besides, she looked frightened enough that even as nauseated and out-of-control as he was feeling, he wouldn’t have any trouble managing her.

“Looks like you’re up. Now, I’m going to untie you. You’re going to find every last file tagged with that project key number or authored by any username associated with the project. You’re going to copy those files onto these drives. You’re going to wipe every possible iteration and back-up from the servers. If you can get that done without doing anything stupid, Mr. Piss-pants over here probably won’t sustain too much more damage, and I’ll let both of you go _before_ I melt everything in here into slag. Think you can do that?”

Wade twisted the blade into the blonde’s hand and the splintering tabletop once more for good measure. The gray-faced man let out a faint groan. The woman shuddered and nodded silently as he stalked toward her, a second, identical knife drawn, and sliced through the ropes binding her to the chair before releasing the manacles still tight around her wrists.

Before she had the chance to stand up completely, Wade was towering over the still-constrained man, yanking his head back by the hair with one hand and pressing the new blade to his throat with the other. The trembling Beta let out a sob that ended in a strangled wheeze as Wade tightened his grip.

The woman worked swiftly, without complaint, and the man remained still and silent under Wade’s blade as they waited. She gingerly placed the new stack of USB drives a few feet away from the mutant once she finished, and collapsed back down into her chair.

“That everything?” he queried. She nodded helplessly.

“Did you erase it all?” She nodded again.

“Great! Okay, just one more thing. You two wanna give me _real _good directions to those holding cells?”__

“I… I’m not sure. I’ve never seen them before. This might not even be on site.” The woman looked sick, and Wade could tell it wasn’t just from being around him.

“Exam rooms? You got a medical research section down here?” Deadpool pressed.

“Sub-level four. I’ve never seen it,” she responded faintly. “We don’t have the clearance to go past this level. I wouldn’t have even known we had those files either. No reason to.” He glanced at her, then at the man, who seemed to be on the verge of fainting. She might even have been telling the truth. Either way, a promise was a promise, which usually meant that Wade didn’t give a shit. Still, these two had served their purpose and looked shook up enough that he didn’t feel an immediate need to blow them up. He would rather save his rage for people that definitely deserved it first.

The purple-haired woman didn’t resist as he snapped the cuffs back onto her wrists. He plucked two of the grenades off his belt and tossed them neatly into the server room, twirling the pins on his fingers, then cocked his head, thinking about it for a moment before throwing in a third. He pushed his office-chair-bound prisoners out the door and well around the corner before shutting both the flimsier office door and the vault-like exterior door. The small, rumbling explosion a few seconds later was noticeable, but surprisingly well-contained. Or at least, Deadpool thought so until the door was slammed outward with a billow of dark, toxic-smelling dust, the sprinkler system went off, and he heard boots on the stairs.

「I didn’t even get to **see** that explosion.」

Deadpool could feel the voice pouting in disappointment as he rounded the corner. He rolled his eyes.

\- - -

Deadpool approached the set of stairs down to the fourth sub-floor, from which he could hear many heavy boots ascending. After a moment of thought, he pulled a couple of heavier-caliber handguns, leaving the knives tucked away for the moment. He didn’t know exactly how many he’d be up against, and he did kind of want to wrap this up and be able to head back home before morning. He also needed to get down to the next level as quickly as possible, before anyone involved with the project he’d seen was able to escape. He didn’t want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary tracking them down.

Before the noise of boots could reach the top of the stairs, Deadpool readied himself around the corner, aiming for the first shot. The door opened, and as soon as the first uniformed body cleared the doorframe, it was down.

“Headshot, hundred points!” the mercenary cried out gleefully. The next several minutes were a blur of motion and deafening noise. His vision clouded a little and refocused, his enemies now indistinguishable from one another as his XP count increased after each kill. He snatched the random drops of ammo and weapons from their bodies as the ones he was holding were knocked from his hands or jammed.

「Woo! I love this game!」

When his vision cleared again, he was halfway down one of the first big lab spaces he’d checked when he’d entered the level. The sprinklers and associated warning klaxon had finally shut off, but emergency lights were still flashing at regular intervals.

He’d apparently dropped one of his own PPQs along the way and picked up a guard’s M9, but he still had all his remaining grenades and only, like, four bullets were working their way out of his body. None of them had even hit anywhere important. More vitally, his suit hadn’t been torn anywhere near a scent gland. Deadpool rolled his mask up momentarily, just enough to spit out the blood pooling in his mouth.

『Oh gross, was that a tooth?』

He tromped his way back down the corridor in search of his own gun. He ran his tongue along the new gap in his mouth as he stepped on and over bodies without regard, listening for reinforcements. Regrowing teeth always felt so weird. From the sound of things, security hadn’t figured out he’d wiped out their first team yet. More importantly, his suit was starting to get even more uncomfortable than clothes usually were on his sensitive skin. Time to get a move on.

The mutant popped through the door, propped open by the body of the first few unlucky Oscorp guards he’d felled, and dashed down the stairs two at a time. He hopped over the railing at the landing to bypass the second half of the steps and strode through the door at the bottom, shaking out his left ankle as the bones realigned with a crack.

\- - -

The fourth sub-floor of labs appeared to be laid out completely differently than the upper R&D lab laboratories, but at least it only had one line-of-sight corridor. That would make things easier. Deadpool stalked down the bright, impossibly clean hallway in the direction he suspected the security control room would be, not bothering to deviate down side-pathways. The cacophony of unknown machinery’s high-pitched whirring and low buzzing sounds overlaid with the trace scents of bleach and terror scratched and tugged at his brain.

『Reminds me of our first date a little, eh? Ah, memories.』

「Now those were some inventive people. Visionaries, even.」

The mutant tugged at the edges of his mask and gloves agitatedly as he continued down the corridor, smoothing over the places where the pieces of his suit overlapped and hid both his scars and scent glands. His already-rapid pace increased as his made his way further into the harshly-illuminated level.

『Yeah, like that’s going to be effective. We already know exactly what kind of horror show we’re dealing with here.』

「More of a horror show than having to look at this guy all the time?」

“Shut up,” Deadpool hissed wearily and without hope that it would do much good.

He’d barely made it a third of the way down the hallway when even more heavily-armed, uniformed people poured out of two different rooms on the right side of the corridor. The closest were practically within arm’s reach already. While they were still fumbling with their weapons and attempting to duck into recessed doorways, Deadpool’s katanas were unsheathed with a barely-audible _snick_.

“Hey guys, nice of you to finally join the party!” he shouted.

The third bloodbath of the night began, and Deadpool came out swinging. In the crowded hallway of what would normally be considered skilled fighters, his blades were a blur of glinting metal heralded by screams and delightfully artistic arterial spray.

「We are an **artiste**.」

“Jackson Pollock who?” Deadpool crowed.

The merc cut down bodies left, right, and center, mad grin on his masked face only widening as he danced around and through his opponents with apparent effortlessness. He advanced steadily toward the only door in the corridor that had stayed firmly shut despite the chaos raging just beyond. Only half-paying attention to the few enemies still standing in the hallway once he reached his target, Deadpool sheathed one katana long enough to empty a clip into the locking mechanism and throw himself bodily into the door.

The surviving security wasted no time in following him into the ops center, located right where Deadpool expected it to be. The mercenary slipped inside the room behind the armed guards keeping watch over the CCTV system and security control switches for the labs beyond. A glance at the displays against one wall confirmed the fear churning deep in his stomach under a mass of boiling rage: there were definitely people being kept in this lab, and at least a couple of so-called “doctors” were here on the late-night shift watching their “patients.”

Bullets would be too quick for anyone involved in this project. Deadpool lapsed into a grim silence, uninterrupted by even the narration of the boxes, as he set back to work. The floor quickly ran slick or sticky in parts, making his work a little harder, but also making it more difficult for the remaining guards to run from him. One of the last few standing made the mistake of getting too close and found himself pinned to the wall by one arm, katana embedded through the flesh several inches into the drywall and wood framing. The idiot kept firing at him anyway, making it too difficult to actually reach the CCTV controls.

“Son of a bitch!” Deadpool howled. “I don’t _fucking_ have time for this.” He yanked his P320 from his shoulder holster. Of course, the same idiot managed to fire off a shot right through Deadpool’s hand at the same time. The Sig dropped from his temporarily-useless, mangled fingers to the floor. The weapon hit the ground at an angle and went off, piercing the metal ductwork criss-crossing the ceiling.

『You really should have paid attention to that trigger recall, dumbass. I told you not to go with the 320.』

“Mother hugger! That was close!” Deadpool heard a vaguely familiar voice carrying through the vent from the room ahead and paused, briefly distracted. Even the surviving guards slowed their shooting for a moment in confusion before picking up with a renewed fury.

“Sorry it took me so long! Sounds like the party started without me!” the voice continued buoyantly, getting clearer and louder. “My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail after my last fight with your boss!”

\- - -

The door slammed open with a resounding bang, embedding the handle fully into the wall directly next to where the unfortunate guard was still pinned. A lithe figure swathed in bright red and rich blue stepped beyond smoking wreckage and into the room, almost instantly lifting Wade’s mood in spite of the circumstances.

“You again?” Spider-Man snarled in disbelief as soon as he spotted the red-and-black-clad mutant. “Whoa guys, don’t worry, Daddy Spidey’s got time for everyone.” This last remark was directed at the uniformed guards who turned their attention from Wade to the new intruder. Spider-Man gracefully dodged blows from the last two security guards standing and webbed them to the wall without ever turning his attention away from Wade.

「 **Daddy Spidey?** Whelp, I have a new fetish.」

『Bold of you to assume this idiot didn’t already have that fetish.』

「Yeah, but now I definitely do too.」

『I swear to Christ, if I hear so much as _one_ daddy longlegs joke out of you—』

“Sweetums, it’s you!” the merc exclaimed with a squeal, valiantly ignoring the sudden cramping in his abdomen that meant he was that much closer to his heat. “Sorry about that, I would have been way more careful if I knew you were here. Probably would’ve worn my date night boots, too.”

「Would’ve actually brought the pretty guns, if we knew there really was going to be someone around here to impress.」

『I’m impressed that he’s already mad at you. He just got here. That’s the kind of attitude I like to see in a man.』

“Oh, that’s right, speaking of impressed! Hey Webhead, do you like my new girls?” He waved the bloodied katana in his left hand, gesturing with his mangled right arm to the other sword still partially embedded in both the half-conscious security guard and the wall. Spider-Man, meanwhile, was carefully webbing up the same man to support his weight away from the pinned arm and applying webbing around the injury as if he were concerned about the bastard’s blood loss. “I had to retire Bea and Arthur— I’m sure you remember them pretty well after we had the chance to get real _up close and personal_ last winter, still sorry about that by the way, aside from getting to watch your moves in all that spandex because I am definitely _not_ sorry about that, baby boy— after a cool little mission we had in Morocco. Feats of derring-do, a literal backstabbing, and no less than _three_ superhero landings. No big deal. I’ll tell you all about it when we get out of here,” the merc babbled, still thrown off by his hero’s sudden appearance.

“Anyway, Mary-Kate, Ashley, this is Spidey. Spidey, these beautiful ladies are oh-so-affectionately known as the Olsen twins. Very pretty, sharper than they look, and I was inexplicably attached the moment I saw them. Kinda like you.” His waggling eyebrows and the exaggerated wink he threw at the wary, exasperated hero were clearly visible through his mask.

“I don’t have time for this,” Spider-Man said flatly, refusing to engage with Wade’s witty banter. Without ever fully turning his back to the mercenary, he stepped lightly amongst the fallen bodies, discarded weapons, and quickly-congealing blood on the icy concrete floor toward the rear wall of the control room. The webhead directed his attention to the array of screens and corresponding bank of switches and keyboards, flipping between the video feeds of the occupied cells, exam rooms, offices, and the scorched and bloodied hallway evidencing Wade’s path through the building.

Wade took the opportunity to eye the deceptively-lithe hero while he was distracted, mentally replaying the way the man had effortlessly smashed open the steel doors of the ops center as he once again wondered if it was possible to wear anything under that lusciously skintight costume. Spider-Man muttered to himself as he worked. His stomach muscles clenched with more cramps, and he realized that thinking about his newest spank bank fodder probably wasn’t the best idea at the moment. It was more important to concentrate on finding out just what Spider-Man was even doing there, both generally and at the moment. To Wade’s surprise, the hero even appeared to be wiping the surveillance footage of the evening, such as it was.

『Yeah, he probably doesn’t want to be linked to you at all, which he will be if people see you were here at the same time.』

「I wouldn’t want to be associated with you, and I’m stuck in your head.」

“Oh hey, is your little recon mission here why no alarms went off even I got real stabby about halfway through level three and had to start collecting eyes and stuff to get down here? They didn’t even notice I was here until I exploded their server room,” Wade shared innocently. There was a loud crash as the hero’s fist went straight through the computer he had been using. Shoulders a taut line, the webbed wonder rounded sharply on Wade with a growl that was probably meant to be menacing and not devastatingly sexy.

“That was you _again _?! Are you kidding me?!”__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah Spidey, what _are_ you doing here?!*
> 
> *The webbed wonder mentioned what he was doing crawling through Oscorp’s vents in Chapter One. How will he react to the unexpected presence of the Regenerating Degenerate™?
> 
> As usual, thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


	4. Spideypool to the Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out _that's_ what Spider-Man was doing at Oscorp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never written a consistent chapter length in my life.

Deadpool backed away from the advancing hero, palms up. “Me again? Hey, I’m not the one who turned off all the alarms here, Spidey!” he protested.

“I’m still blaming you,” Peter retorted. “I was just here to follow up on leads associated with _my_ fr— with the Green Goblin, who is _my_ responsibility. Recon only. Temporarily disabling those alarms while a super was actively in the building, doing their job, should have cancelled each other out at worst. Only you could screw things up that bad for me.” Peter sighed in frustration, pressing the heel of one hand to his temple. The low buzz of his spidey sense while in such close proximity to the unpredictable killer was already making his hair stand up and the back of his neck itch. He knew he’d end up with a killer headache from it before the end of the night.

It was too early in the evening for this much Parker Luck. The mercenary had caused all this damage, but _Peter_ had been the one who allowed him the opportunity. Spider-Man would be the one who would get blamed, if it came out that he had been in the Oscorp building at the same time.

To be honest, Peter was already blaming himself.

Deadpool pouted dramatically under his hyper-expressive mask, crossing his arms and slouching back against the blood-spattered wall. Peter bit his lip under the spandex mask. He flicked his gaze toward the fried CCTV switches to his right, then glancing back over his shoulder. The bank of computers he had trawled for data and summarily thrashed when Deadpool started running his mouth was emitting a high-pitched whine as the few fans still functioning attempted to cool the busted CPUs. He’d gotten everything he could out of that, and the small amount he’d parsed while collecting the data had been alarming. His work wasn’t done, and now he had a burly, sulking killer to manage as well on top of everything else.

“You want to help me out here, big guy? Okay, look. I think I know what Oscorp has been doing to these people based on the stuff I just trashed, but I can’t get them all out of here on my own. You want to fix this? Help me protect them and get them somewhere safe. If they’ve been experimented on as extensively as it seems, I think I know who can help them and keep them away from both Oscorp and SHIELD. I need to find the server room and wipe any back-ups Oscorp might have of the data before I can join you.” The merc flinched minutely when Peter first spoke, but as he continued, the larger man began to perk up considerably.

“Don’t worry about that, baby boy! I got you covered.” He pulled several USB drives from one of his pouches and waved them around. “I’m working, remember? Well, I was working until I found this, at least. Point is, I already made those IT nerds copy over every back-up they had of everything that looked even remotely related to this project onto these, then wrecked their servers just to be safe. I mean seriously, let’s just say everything in that room is one big solid state drive now.”

“I’m sorry, did you say you got this for a job? Wow, I didn’t think even you’d stoop low enough to work for people stealing data on each others’ human lab rats. Can’t expect someone who used to take a paycheck from the Kingpin to have a royal standard, I guess.” Peter was more disappointed than he had any right to be, all things considered. He always seemed to find himself bouncing between amusement and disappointment when he was working in proximity to Deadpool — with a healthy dose of fear thrown in after he’d been on the wrong end of a katana more than once. Something in him kept wanting to offer the mercenary more chances than he deserved by any rights, but this was going too far.

“Whoa there, Webhead. Do you even listen? I just said I’m off the clock,” the mercenary shot back in a hard voice. “I know we haven’t unlocked the tragic backstory level of our relationship yet, but you should’ve picked up by now that I don’t fuck with human experimentation Just because we can’t all be as perfect as you doesn’t mean I can’t have standards. Now do you want my help, or are you going to keep being a jerk?”

If Peter didn’t know better than to think Deadpool cared what anyone thought of him, he would have supposed the merc was almost offended at his assumptions. After a moment, he nodded reluctantly. He reached his hand out for the drives Deadpool had been waving around a moment ago.

“Give me those,” he ordered. “I’ll take them with me to whoever I can get to help these folks. Let me make a couple of calls so they’re ready for us. _Don’t_ say anything, or they might not want to help. You should probably get your stupid sword, by the way.” He waggled his fingers impatiently until the drives were handed over, then turned to handle the pinned and webbed security guard that was somehow still conscious before making the call.

“Lights out, pal,” he chimed, not entirely unkindly. He clocked the guard lightly on the temple and turned away again, dropping his voice in an effort to keep Deadpool out of the conversation as he called the Baxter building from his suit HUD. Surprisingly, Ben Grimm answered.

“Peter? What’s going on?” he asked, voice pitched in alarm. Peter winced reflexively at the casual use of his real name when he was calling from Spider-Man’s number. Then again, he wasn’t in the habit of called the Four in the middle of the night, no matter how chummy they might be outside patrol hours. He could forgive Grimm’s worry; the guy was such a dad at heart, and Peter was even younger than Johnny.

“Heya Ben, I’m cool. Didn’t mean to worry ya. I might just need your help with something. Is Reed or Sue there?”

“They’re probably both asleep. What do you need?”

“Well, turns out I’m kind of in the middle of a surprise rescue op—”

“Where are you? We can be there in—” Ben cut in.

“No, no, it’s all good, man,” Peter rushed to explain. “I’ve got that part handled. I’m just gonna have some people who need somewhere to stay while they recover, and they’re probably going to need medical attention. Some kind of weird experimental stuff, looked a little too much like what Gobby Senior was working on for comfort. It’s probably mostly going to be in Sue’s field of expertise, honestly. Could probably use a pick-up, though, if my favorite hotshot pilot is up for it and has, like, a getaway vehicle cleverly disguised as a catering van or something handy. You think that’d be okay?”

Ben laughed a little. “Yeah, of course, Pete. We’ll take care of it. Send me your coordinates and an ETA, and I’ll be there. You sure you’re good? You got support on hand?” Grimm still sounded concerned, but at least he wouldn’t be mother-henning all over Spider-Man for the rest of the night while he waited for the go-ahead. Peter was sure he’d get more probing questions from Reed and Johnny, who were privy to the finer details of his relationship with the Osborns, once he actually got to the Baxter building.

“Yup, I’m, uh…” he trailed off momentarily, watching Deadpool try to yank his katana out of the wall with both hands before apparently getting into an argument with himself, hands flailing as he whispered loudly. “I got it covered. See you soon.”

Wordlessly, he walked over to where Deadpool was still gesticulating wildly, pulled the blade free with one hand, and webbed over the sluggishly-bleeding wound on the pale security guard with the other.

“Here,” Peter said, tossing the sword toward the mutant, perhaps a little carelessly. If Deadpool didn’t catch it and it stabbed him in the foot, he’d heal, and maybe it would teach him to pay attention. “I’m pretty sure we’ve, uh, taken care of most of the security on this level—” he avoided looking at any of the bodies or at the horrifying amount of gore he’d thankfully still managed to avoid stepping in “—but there are still a couple of, and I hate to sully such a noble profession by using the title, _scientists_ in one of the medical labs that we’ll have to handle. There are probably a few other people floating around as well. There should be some stairs or an elevator we can get everyone into, and I can make sure that we keep things unlocked until we can get everyone outside.”

“What about after that?” the imposing mercenary asked as he wiped his weapons clean and re-sheathed them.

“I’ve got it covered. Let’s go,” Peter instructed. “And Deadpool? No more deaths on my watch. I’ll drag you out of this city in pieces myself, if I have to,” he warned with a waving finger, though he was careful to keep his body language mostly neutral and not letting his own Alpha instincts to turn his posture into an assumption of dominance or aggressive challenge. Not the time to start a fight, especially under circumstances that meant he’d be hard-pressed to get away, much less win.

“Ooh, feisty! We likey!” Deadpool crowed, shooting finger guns at the webslinger. It did not escape Peter’s notice that he avoided actually responding to the potential threat in either words or body language. The mercenary followed Peter out of the control room, past the smaller room filled with the smoking wreckage of machinery the hero had already destroyed, and back into the level’s main hallway, leaving a trail of bloody bootprints behind. Spider-Man, of course, left no such trail as he hurried forward along the wall in unusual, tense silence, intently listening to the sounds of human activity and following the vague outlines of the floor layout that his suit’s sensors had been able to put together.

“How do you even know where we’re going?” Deadpool finally asked, once Peter’s wall crawl slowed to, well, a crawl and he held out a hand for the mercenary to hold up as well. He tapped the lens of his mask.

“Enhanced senses bordering on precognition. Extremely good tech courtesy of my gal in the chair. Bitten by a radioactive Daredevil. Pick one,” Peter responded evasively with a quiet chuckle. “I want you to keep going down this hallway. There are at least half a dozen people being held around that corner, maybe more, probably all imprisoned in separate cells, unless they’re keeping some of the cells empty. I didn’t see anyone in the labs or exam rooms on the closed circuit surveillance, so I’m assuming that whoever is here will be in the cells or the offices. Keep your eyes sharp though. I’m going back down to the end of the main corridor and handling the doctors and any other staff who are still down here. ”

“And why do you think you get to be the one to do that?” The mercenary sounded completely cold for the first time, tone all murderous business. The low buzz of spidey sense suddenly kicked up a notch, making Peter a shade more wary as he answered carefully.

“Because you’ll just kill them, and we both know I can’t allow that to happen. Plus, they might know more that I’ll need to share with Sue— Doctor Storm— when we bring these people to her for help.”

“Can’t believe he’s on a first-name basis with those nerds, and I can’t even get a single cross-over issue,” Deadpool griped in an undertone, then turned back to Peter. “What if I pinkie-swear not to k-word anyone until after you ask questions?”

“Absolutely not! What is wrong with you?”

“How much time you got, sweets?” Deadpool laughed sharply. The spidey sense ratcheted up another notch.

“I thought you wanted to help me. Can you please just do what I asked? The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can part ways, and I can get back to my patrol while you get back to whatever it is you do when you’re not earning your blood money,” Peter coaxed.

“Yeeaaahhh, about that… Sorry, Spidey!”

Peter’s senses blared in sudden alarm as three blades flew in his direction and the red-and-black-clad mutant bolted down the corridor— away from hallway with the holding cells and toward the offices Peter had just pointed out.

“Oh crackerjack!” Peter cried, dodging the knives and letting them clatter to the ground harmlessly. He crept along the walls and floor in pursuit of the merc. The other man barely had a head start on him, and whatever mutations he had beyond his well-known healing factor were no match for Peter’s enhanced speed and agility in a straight-up chase, even if he kept off the floor and couldn’t websling. Before Deadpool could barge into any of the entrances to the medical offices, Peter webbed them all shut and began to scramble well back down the wall of the corridor for his own safety. Deadpool rounded on him with a feral, wide-eyed grin that was visible even through his mask.

“That was really stupid, Webs. Even you’re not pretty enough to get in my way when I’m dealing with those Weapon X-wannabe pieces of crap.”

“Whoah, hey, ‘Pool!” Peter blurted frantically, still scrambling backwards. “I told you, I might need information from those sorry excuses for Geneva Convention violations to help all those patients you promised to help me rescue, remember? You think maybe that’s more important?”

Deadpool paused mid-step, seeming to actually be contemplating Peter’s words. His head jerked up and to the left for a moment. Peter kept his distance, just in case.

“Stop being reasonable and agreeing with him, asshole.” He redirected his focus to Peter. “Fine. You, personally, are off the hook just this once. I agree that getting these people out is more important, but I’m not making any promises about what happens to these chucklefucks later. Better hope you’re not in my way then.”

“Well we can worry about how I’m going to protect the city from you later, then,” Peter quipped, voice more lighthearted than he actually felt. He continued his crawling retreat down the wall of the hallway, back toward the sounds of captive humans. He could focus on whether or not Deadpool was a threat to his own person after he got all of these people somewhere safe.

\- - -

The hero and the mercenary made their way back down the hall in wary silence. They didn’t encounter any other guards or lab technicians. Peter wasn’t sure if this was lucky, or simply because Deadpool had already turned half the labs into a body-strewn wreckage before he’d been intercepted.

At least this way Peter didn’t need to try to stop the man from “k-wording” anyone else in front of him while also trying to pull off a rescue and figure out everything he could about just what the hell Oscorp was up to. He already had the feeling he would be up for the next couple of nights on long patrols, trying to make himself believe that he could somehow make up for the havoc he’d allowed Deadpool to wreak inside the building.

Rounding the corner, the pair finally reached the secure entry to the holding area. Peter could hear movement and low voices beyond, and as they approached, he could see through the security glass in the door that although the central floor was brightly-lit, the outer edges of the space were darkened. The actual entrance was, unsurprisingly, locked.

“Ugh, great, more biometric crap? Lemme go scoop some more eyeballs,” Deadpool sighed, turning on his heel.

“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what is _wrong_ with you?” Peter asked, somehow reaching new heights of appalledwith the mutant once again. “Please just let me handle this. Keep watch.” He didn’t bother to add that he would probably sense that there was danger before Deadpool spotted anything as pulled his Spider-Phone (not that he ever called the half-rebuilt StarkPhone he used just for Spider-Man business by the nickname out loud, considering the grief he’d gotten over “spidey sense.”) out of its pocket in his discreet utility belt along with a micro-USB cable, leaving the extra web cartridges and the regular old Android belonging to regular old Peter Parker undisturbed in the neighboring slots.

After connecting the phone to the electronic lock and a few minutes of patient fiddling, a gratifying chirp emitted not only from the secure entry point just in front of him, but from what sounded like every door in the holding cell section. Excellent. That would certainly make the next step far less startling for the people inside. Probably a good time to update Grimm on their progress too, so Peter keyed in a quick message from his wrist after slipping the jailbroken StarkPhone back into his belt. He rose gracefully from his comfortable crouch and opened the door with a flourishing bow.

“Absolute degenerates first,” he declared with over-the-top politeness as he gestured forward.

“Oh sweetums, you _do_ pay attention to me!” Deadpool trilled, hands clasped together in a mockery of joy. He curtsied dramatically, then swept past Peter into the common room of the holding area with an impressive flounce.

Peter almost slammed into him when the man stopped short, completely frozen, just a few few into the space, saved only by his enhanced reflexes. He didn’t understand why Deadpool had paused at first, as his spidey sense had maintained its same low level of uneasy warning that it usually kept up around the unpredictably-violent man.

The smell of antiseptic and some underlying bitter, yet still disturbingly, organically _human_ scent had suddenly gotten much stronger, and none of the newly-unlocked cell doors had yet been touched. Looking around the horribly clinical space, Peter recalled the mutant’s earlier anger and his own limited understanding of Weapon X from working with Wolverine in the past, and thought perhaps he understood.

Slowly, delicately, Peter inched away from Deadpool, giving him space, then moved toward the first unlocked door on the left side of the room. He positioned himself between the still-unmoving ex-soldier and whoever might be imprisoned in the medical cell, trying to keep the man in his peripheral vision through the security glass as he opened the door. Peter cleared his throat loudly before speaking. As he did, Deadpool seemed to come back to himself a little.

“Hi there,” he offered gently, peering into the darkened cell. There was a twin-sized metal bed frame up against two of the three plain, concrete-block walls. The first one was empty, but there were two forms huddled on the second. The Omega men— he thought they were Omegas, at least— that peered at him cautiously from behind scratchy hospital sheets reeked of dried sweat and adrenaline.

Peter was a little ill and practically exhausted just smelling the traces of their fear and resigned helplessness through his mask filter. He swung the door the rest of the way open, letting light bathe the tiny space as Deadpool finally started to move, opening cell doors on the right side of the room. “We’re here to help. Do you want to come out?”

“Wait, are you really—“ one of the men began.

“Spider-Man?!” shrieked a disbelieving voice from the other side of the room. Peter jerked around.

“Sorry to disappoint, lady. But if you want to come out, the webbed wonder himself is over there,” Deadpool responded to the voice, jerking his thumb back toward Peter.

“Honestly, we don’t even look that similar, I don’t know what gives,” he added in that odd, unfocused way he’d exhibited several times. His comment seemed to work nonetheless, as a middle-aged Asian woman slipped hesitantly out of the cell the merc had just opened, closely followed by her cellmate. Peter pegged her and the stocky, dark-haired girl who clutched the hem of her shirt as Betas as they got closer.

“Wow, it really is you. My kiddo and their boyfriend got mugged once, a few years ago, near the south edge of Forest Hills. You saved them. And now you’re here for us,” the woman babbled. If she hadn’t been a Beta, the mess of cortisol, adrenaline, and sudden dump of endorphins she was apparently experiencing might have been intense enough to make Peter a little sick, even with his mask filter. He really wished he had changed it out for a fresh one before his patrol after all. Both of them were giving off pretty intense scent markers for Betas, even given their current state.

Come to think of it, the Omegas had smelled pretty off too. Peter was suddenly concerned that Oscorp’s experiments had gotten further along than he’d feared. That was, of course, exactly the moment the Beta woman wobbled dangerously and almost dropped to the ground. He caught her easily, carefully setting her at the edge of the nearest steel-topped counter and backing away with his palms up when her eyes went wide in renewed fear.

“We’re here to help,” Peter repeated, holding off on his trademark witty banter in the face of more pressing concerns. The men whose door he’d first opened finally skulked out of their shadowed cell and into the lighted common area, still wrapped in their blankets. They moved to stand near the women, and the curly-haired guy who had begun to ask Peter a question earlier started speaking with her in a low, vaguely reassuring tone.

Peter went back opening cell doors and trying to coax patients out of the darkened rooms. Surprisingly, Deadpool was somehow having an easier time of it, despite the weapons clearly strapped all over his body and the scorch marks on his suit. Finally, all fourteen cells were open and the prisoners coaxed out. Two of the cells had been empty.

Peter surveyed the twenty-three people huddled together in their ill-fitting scrubs, faces sickly and shadowed with exhaustion and illness. He approached one of the last people to leave her room, the only one without a cellmate. The woman, who he was struggling to pin the gender of by scent despite the fact that his scent filter was quickly becoming overwhelmed in the small space filled with stress pheromones, turned toward him. She squared shoulders in what was clearly meant to be a display of confidence, though it was betrayed by her wide eyes and clenched fists.

“How long has it been since they took the other girl from your room?” he asked her quietly. She seemed surprised at the question, like she didn’t think the hero would have noticed the odd numbers or the rumpled, unchanged sheets on the second bed, and paused like she was considering something before answering.

“We don’t… I think just a couple of days?” she responded, wrapping a few of her dreadlocks around her fingers anxiously. She shuffled closer, seeming unwilling to let the others overhear. “It’s hard to keep track of days and stuff, sometimes. Marie tried to hide that she was started to get sick like the others had. She started forgetting where we were, couldn’t keep food down so well after a while, stuff like that. Once she started to really smell like an Alpha, I thought she would get better because she was getting what she needed, but… she got so mad, I don’t even remember what it was about, and then she just dropped.” The woman paled further beneath her dark complexion. “Her nose was bleeding and she started puking, and then a bunch of those guards rushed in with one of the doctors and took her away.”

“That’s what happened with the others, too,” interjected a young, red-haired Beta man. “I was with one of them, before he got sick and they moved me in with Jared. His cellmate got sick from the dose the first week they stop letting us go home after treatment.” Peter and Deadpool both jerked around at that.

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘go home?’ Did he say ‘go home?’” Deadpool asked disbelievingly. Peter wasn’t sure if that was directed at himself, the patients, or whatever imaginary friend it was Deadpool was normally ranting at. Some of the patients that had been gathered around him started to back away. The woman Peter had been talking with spoke up again, rather bravely in the hero’s opinion.

“We volunteered, at least at first. Marie said she just never felt like a Beta, and it was hard for her to get people to take that seriously. I know being an Omega isn’t supposed to be that big of a deal anymore, especially with mandatory heat-leave and birth control and childcare and stuff, it’s not like before they passed the Equal Rights Amendment in the 90s. It still sucks for a lot of people, and I just wanted the chance to not have to worry about that. The compensation was pretty decent, too, which sure helped. But when people started getting sick and acting weird, the doctors picked us off one by one at our appointments on one of the upper floors and smuggled us down here while we were messed up on the treatment. I think we started out with thirty people,” she explained.

Peter felt horribly ill, and he knew he was pale under his mask. It really was Norman’s work all over again. The early symptoms even sounded the same. This also explained why there hadn’t been anyone in the group who smelled definitively like an Alpha. He tried to keep his voice even and confident.

“Alright, miss, thank you for telling us. Deadpool, stand down,” he said, holding out a hand toward the merc, who still looked ready to punch something. “We’re going to get all of you out of here. I have friends who can help.” Most of the prisoners seemed to relax just slightly at the idea that they would really be rescued, the cortisol-laced cloud of fear lifting the tiniest bit. Peter started to key in another brief, coded message to the Four, updating them on the number of people they’d be cramming into whatever transportation they’d be able to bring him. With this many, discretion might be more challenging, but he had faith in Ben.

“Why should we trust the bug, huh? I’ve always had my suspicions based on what the Bugle says, and then he just happens to show up with another masked maniac, and he _just so happens_ to have friends that can ‘help’ us? Who’s to say they’re not just looking to learn what they can from our bloodwork and finish up the experiment themselves. Hell, what if they’re just dumping us at Mount Sinai’s emergency room and hoping for the best?” a gray-haired man asked from the back of the group. Peter took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, even when the man’s words clearly got to a few of the other people. It wouldn’t be the first time someone he was rescuing was afraid to accept his help.

The others erupted in a clamor before the gray-haired man had finished ranting. From what Peter could gather, half of them didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the argument and just wanted the chance to get out, about a third were, surprisingly, defending him, and the few remaining were freaked out enough by the man’s words to be unsure if they should even risk leaving. Peter knew that they couldn’t risk leaving any of them behind He really didn’t want to have to web and carry any of the already-traumatized patients, not least because it wouldn’t exactly help his case.

“Plus, I bet he’s already an Alpha. Of course he doesn’t understand why we’re here. Is he really going to help?” the gray-haired man added suspiciously.

“What?! That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s so gender-ist! I go to rallies! I donate to Planned Parenthood!” Peter cried out indignantly. “I don’t get paid to swing around saving people all night, y’know.  What if I started making wild accusations based on what I assume someone’s sex or gender is just by looking at them, huh? You can’t even smell me, for crying out loud!” Deadpool started giggling as his outburst wound down.

“Okay, okay, Spidey here’s a nice Beta vigilante you can bring home to Mom, who just wants to help the good people of New York. I, on the other hand, am a little pressed for time, which by the way I get paid for because some of us have standards, so I would love it if we could get a fucking move on here people,” Deadpool said, his voice hardening as he went on, once he had gotten his laughter under control, and one hand hovering suspiciously near his thigh holster.

“What, your drop got a midnight deadline or you’ll turn into a pumpkin?” Peter snarked, his mood significantly calmed by the broad-shouldered mutant’s mirth. Nonetheless, he didn’t bother correcting Deadpool on his gender. He’d take any advantage when it came to hiding Spider-Man’s civilian identity. If the mouthy mercenary went around blabbing that he was a Beta, that would be be one less factor pointing toward the dorky, quiet Alpha guy really under the mask.

In response to Peter’s joke, Deadpool yanked his mask and suit apart for a moment, flashing a swathe of pockmarked, scarred, and chafed skin across his neck and jaw. “Not exactly,” he replied through a forced grin and bared teeth. The smell of an Omega dangerously close to heat washed over Peter as if he wasn’t even breathing through a scent filter. His knees locked and his own jaw stiffened minutely in response as he took a moment to recover adequately from the flash of nauseating panic that had washed over him before he gave a jerking nod in response. At least that dramatic display coupled with the mercenary’s speech seemed to mollify, or at the very least cow, everyone else in the room into compliance.

“Great. Let’s go.” The larger man stalked forward, arms spread to herd everyone out ahead of him. His shoulders tensed as Peter approached him from behind. The hero moved into the Omega’s peripheral vision while maintaining the same neutral, non-threatening posture he had adopted when the pair had first started speaking to the patients. The hero spoke quickly as they made their way to the security gate.

“There’s a freight elevator down the hall connecting to the medical labs and exam rooms. It goes up to the street level parking garage, where the loading docks are. Ben Grimm, and probably one of the other members of the Four, will meet us there,” he explained. He turned his attention back to Deadpool, who had thankfully refitted the pieces of his suit seamlessly. “Deadpool, will you take point so I can keep everyone together?”

“Do I gotta?” the merc whined.

“Let’s just get all these people out of here to safety before I have an anxiety attack and puke everywhere, not necessarily in that order, because it’s seriously making me ill and driving me a little crazy,” he leaned in and said under his breath to the mercenary, quiet enough that none of the patients would hear.

“What is?” Deadpool cocked his head at him.

“Smell. No offense. Just everyone at once… it’s a lot,” Peter clarified curtly as he pressed the bridge of his nose between his gloved fingers. Deadpool bounced back on his heels, surreptitiously tugging the edges of his mask down.

“Actually Spidey, I think I should watch our six. You’ll be able to tell if there’s anyone ahead of us, and you know the layout of the space better. I just want to get out of here already,” he replied quickly, drawing one katana and making to move toward the back of the group. Peter sighed and nodded in acquiescence.

He led the shuffling string of blanket-wrapped, scrubs-clad prisoners out into the corridor as quietly as he could, senses on even higher alert than usual due to his fraying nerves. He desperately wanted to go home, shower, and change his suit, or at least hit up a drop spot to swap his mask and reapply scent blockers.

Between the pair, the group was herded the few hundred yards to the freight elevator fairly quickly. Peter updated the Four with what he hoped would be an accurate ETA, so long as they didn’t run into major trouble. Deadpool scurried into the elevator several seconds after the last rescued prisoner limped tiredly in and flipped the switch to the loading dock level. Peter didn’t bother to look up, immersed in his Spider-Phone (Spider-Phone™ even, Deadpool might appreciate that one even if no one else would) and the task of scrambling the wireless portions of the building’s security system. He tried to remember if there was anywhere in the parking garage level he’d be able to hook up to a computer and at the very least wipe exterior security camera footage to protect the Four from having the break-in traced back to them— well, Deadpool’s involvement being traced to them, at the very least.

“Wow, this would have been _way_ easier than my method. Clearly I should have tried to get more info out of my client beforehand. Do you know how many flights of stairs I had to walk down? It’s bullshit, man. I don’t need to do that much cardio. How do you do it, Webs?” Deadpool chattered. For some reason, the man seemed almost nervous. Peter looked at him oddly out of the corner of his eye, although he doubted the merc would be able to tell through the lenses of his mask.

“I just climbed in the service elevator access panel on the roof and pretty much climbed straight down. I can do that,” he replied, waggling the fingers of one hand in a helpful reminder. Deadpool nodded thoughtfully.

“I fuckin’ hate you sometimes, pretty boy.”

One of the Omegas hunched against the elevator wall behind Peter snorted loudly at that, although their mirth seemed to exhaust them and they sagged further against the wall. A sudden shiver went down Peter’s neck. Just then, a rumbling noise came from beneath them and the rising elevator shook a little. The middle-aged woman who had mistaken Deadpool for Spider-Man screamed. Peter rounded on Deadpool suspiciously.

“What did you do?”

“What makes you think I did something?” the mutant protested. The lenses of Peter’s mask narrowed as he stared him down.

“Because it’s literally always you if you are anywhere in the vicinity. It’s been you like three times in the past two hours!”

“Fine, fine!” Deadpool threw his hands up. “Told you I was going to get those fuckers, and you weren’t gonna stop me for long.” Peter leaned heavily against the wall. He’d just webbed those doors shut without a thought. He’d basically trapped those people down there for Deadpool.

The elevator shook once more and ground to a bouncing halt. There were a few more screams as people stumbled into one another and clung together. Peter used his mask LiDAR to check, and—

“Great, we’re stuck between floors,” he hissed, glaring pointedly, though he was sure the expression didn’t translate. He inspected further. “At least we’re almost at the right floor.” The webslinger directed his attention toward everyone else and tried to keep his tone light. “It’s alright, everyone. I’m going to shut down the cameras on this level, and then come back for you. _He_ ,” here he jerked his head toward Deadpool, “is going to wait here with you and keep watch until I do. You’re going to be fine.”

Peter wrenched open the doors with ease, then shot webs from the inside of the doors to the yellow safety pylons around the freight elevator platform. If something went wrong or Deadpool did some other stupid thing, a pair of high and correlated probabilities, at least this way the car would stay open and suspended long enough to get everyone out.

“Wait here,” he reminded the pitiful-looking group before webbing up to one of the I-beams crossing the parking garage’s ceiling. He took a moment to orient himself before locating the security booth. This was a pitifully low-grade set-up compared to the subbasement levels. He barely had time to let Ben know to pull up to the loading dock before his script had bashed the all the terminal’s simple security codes.

“Hashed passwords, more like hash browns” he muttered. It had been a long day before he’d even started patrol, and usually he would have stopped to eat something by then, alright? Besides, if he used up all the lame quips while he was alone, he’d be wittier when it counted. Or something.

From there, it was short work to wipe the last hour of recording, just to be safe, and prevent the cameras from recording for the rest of the night. He couldn’t shut them off remotely though, which turned out not to be a bad thing.

“Oh shoot!” he hissed as several security guards exited the different stairwells around the garage. “Don’t shoot!” he cried loudly toward the nearest one, swinging toward the woman and webbing first her gun, then her to the wall. He hoped that was enough to distract some of the other guards in his direction and away from the freight elevator while Deadpool got people out and toward the loading dock.

Sure enough, he heard a radio crackle as three more guards converged on his location crouched on a beam not far from the webbed-up woman.“Sorry folks, I’m sure you’re just doing your job, and I’m just doing mine. There’s a key difference there though: I just took out this supervillain, and you’re getting paid to protect his stuff.” He leaped from the beam onto a concrete pillar, then up to the ceiling in the opposite direct from the elevator as he spoke, dodging shots all the while from the first three guards to arrive, while the last two to arrive busied themselves trying to unstick the first guard from his webs.

“What a tangled web, am I right?” he laughed. It was another lame joke, but it didn’t need to be good to keep them annoyed enough to be a little stupid. Alright, maybe his theory about getting out all the lame quips aha of time needed some work.

From the safety mirror in the corner, he caught sight of Deadpool pulling the last few people out of the elevator and ushering them up the ramp. Alright, great. Now, where was Grimm?

Peter dodged another bullet reflexively as he heard tires screech up to the loading dock. Perfect. “I’ve had a lovely visit overall, but I just have a thing about guns, y’know?” he asked rhetorically. No returning banter; Spider-Man was wasted on some goons. He sighed, then expertly shot sticky bundles of webbing at each weapon, clogging them and immobilizing the shooters’ trigger fingers in one go. “You should really think about finding a new job. I’m sure you’re not bad people.” He webbed them to the wall as the vehicle drove away.

Now that he was alone and didn’t have to worry about watching all the rescued patients, Peter took the time to review the cameras at the garage’s terminal one more time, taking care to avoid the line-of-sight of the webbed-up guards so they couldn’t report on just what he’d been doing, and delving further into the actual Oscorp security system. Sure enough, Deadpool had literally just waltzed into the building earlier in the day, then skulked around until after hours. He’d started working his way down to the medical lab around the same time Peter had entered the building.

Still, the mutant had helped with the rescue op, and he was the one who had recovered all the data and gotten the back-ups wiped in the first place. Keeping that data out of Oscorp’s hands was unquestionably a good thing. Stomach still feeling queasy about the whole thing, Peter wiped the earlier footage as well, including the limited footage that had managed to capture Deadpool before he seemed to realize that the alarms were disengaged. It probably wouldn’t take too long to figure out that the mercenary had been in the building, but hopefully it would get chalked up purely to corporate espionage. Finally, he reset the building’s alarm system.

He made a running jump onto the ceiling and skittered out into the adjoining boulevard, leaping into the air and swinging across the street to perch on top of a streetlight for long enough to call the Four before he started making his way toward the Baxter Building. Ben answered the phone again. Peter could hear other people in the background.

“Hey P- Spider-Man,” he greeted. “Sounds like you made it out alright. You on your way here?”

“Yeah, just had a couple bugs to take care of first, but I’ll swing by now,” Peter said with a grin, relaxing into the rhythm as he webbed through the city. Grimm groaned at the lame pun.

“I can almost see why you thought the so-called ‘Merc with the Mouth’ counted as appropriate back-up. He won’t shut up about you,” he complained. Peter’s wobbled a little through the follow-up of his next jump in surprise.

“He’s still there?” he questioned. He hadn’t thought Deadpool would have wanted to delay the completion of his job enough to help transport the rescued people, much less actually enter the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, especially after smelling how close to a heat the man was. “I’ll be right over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on posting once a week, but ended up getting behind in writing and editing and and then skipped whole bunch because of -gestures vaguely- just, y'know, everything. I'm hesitantly pleased that Marvel and Disney have made statements in favor of Black Lives Matter/donated money but not holding my breath for significant internal change without more pressure.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and taking care to avoid burnout. Remember to strip metadata and blur faces in your publicly posted photos, and turn off your location tracking services whether you're out at a protest or staying home to help make it less clear who exactly might be out.
> 
> Anyway, Black Lives Matter, defund the police, happy Pride, and the author of Harry Potter is still dead to me.
> 
> 🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
> 
> As usual, thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


	5. Back at It Again at the Baxter Building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter checks in with the Fantastic Four. What the heck is Deadpool still doing there?

Peter landed lightly against one of the Baxter building’s large windows several minutes later, a little out of breath from his hurried swing over to the skyscraper. The window automatically unlocked and tipped inward once the security system recognized him. He released his grip on the glass to slide forward into a graceful crouch in the atrium between Reed’s lab and Sue’s, landing at the feet of the latter scientist. 

“Hiya, Doctor Storm,” he greeted Sue with a tight hug. His eyes bounced around the dimly-lit space, searching for Deadpool, who he assumed was still nearby based on the way the tiny hairs on his body stood on end and the base of his skull had started tingling as soon as he was in view of the atrium’s windows. “Thanks forhelping. And thank you for coming down to meet us in the middle of the night. Where is everyone?”

“Hey, Webs,” the Beta woman replied, smiling warmly. “Johnny and Reed are clearing out the two meeting rooms downstairs for temporary housing for our guests, and Ben is helping them settle in the kitchen to eat and talk about what to expect. I thought maybe I’d let them rest before I ask if any of them are willing to come to the lab. That will give me the chance to make some sense of the data you recovered first.”

“Technically, that was actually Deadpool,” Peter reminded her charitably. He still hadn’t spotted the mercenary despite his spidey sense buzzing erratically as his conversation with Sue continued.

“True. Not that it would have been much help to these folks if you hadn’t also been there. So, do you really think that it’s the same formula that Nor—”

“Definitely created working off the Green Goblin’s formulas, yes,” Peter agreed hastily. The civilian identities of both Green Goblins had remained secret despite their public feud with Spider-Man and resulting casualties and massive property damage. Most people hadn’t even realized that there had been more than one Goblin, even in the powered community. Peter wanted to keep if that way in case Harry was ever rehabilitated. Perhaps he might not have been quite so worried if it had just been Norman, but Harry was still his best friend. Not to mention, Peter really didn’t want someone like Deadpool to have that kind of information on hand in case it suddenly became just a little too temptingly valuable.

Luckily, Sue seemed to realize his motivations and didn’t draw further attention to the Goblin, choosing instead to quiz him on what he’d seen of the actual biochemistry and medical technology involved in the retrieved data and discuss potential solutions. Peter followed her into her research lab, as always appreciating the airy, well-curated space with its mix of bleeding-edge medical and laboratory equipment with Sue’s fondness for retaining old-school materials like chalkboards and a skeleton that Johnny had sworn up and down that she’d actually heisted out of her anatomy class in med school.

Also as always, he found himself thinking about how much Gwen would have loved Doctor Storm’s lab, and how much more she might have liked it there than the Oscorp R&D department if she’d interned in if she’d had the chance to see it. She and Sue would have been able to challenge and balance each other perfectly as researchers, and they would have loved each other. Peter would have happily traded in his studies in mechanical engineering and biochemistry for theoretical physics and astronomy to work with Dr. Richards if it meant he could have shared that with Gwen. He should have introduced her when he had the chance. Maybe she would have left Oscorp before Norman had gotten out of control. If she had been working closely with one of the Four, it would have been that much harder for the Goblin to get his claws on her in the first place. Just more ways that Peter had failed her.

He realized that he had stopped in the middle of the laboratory, not even halfway to the computer station Sue was tapping away at, in the process of trying to decrypt the drives he’d provided her as she waited for him to catch up.

He’d also finally located Deadpool. The merc apparently had no interest coming anywhere near anything even tangentially medical-looking if he didn’t absolutely have to. He was simply looming in the doorway to the research lab, his mask a blank stare tracking between the two people in the room. He really was kind of a creep. At least Peter wasn’t catching any of the man’s pre-heat scent anymore, although it really was impressive that he continued to keep what passed for composure in the sometime-vigilante considering how close to the edge he’d smelled earlier that evening. Peter’s stomach roiled just thinking about it.

He mentally shook himself and quickstepped to catch up with Doctor Storm. “You back with me, Webs?” she asked with a laugh and a slightly creased brow, rubbing his shoulder gently. This was part of why Peter didn’t end up working with the Fantastic Four that often. They were all far too happy to attach themselves to him and try to share the emotional burden, because that was just the kind of people they were. It was sweet, and the support could be nice when he was out of his depth when it came to sheer resource access (not to mention infinitely better than ever having to talk to Tony Stark about anything literally ever, much less outright ask the Avengers for access to their resources). Still, Peter was more of a “bury his problems deep away from the light of day and then take them out by backflipping and spin-kicking dudes in back alleys at night” kind of guy.

“Yup, peachy keen!” he chirped in reply, giving a thumbs up and a smile that he knew would be big enough translate at least a little through his mask and widen his lenses enough to give him an innocent, disingenuous look. He was the one who perfected the expression-mimicking software driving them, after all. “Anyway, pretty sure Deadpool still has the drive with the actual decryption code. That one might cost us though, and it’s probably a little out of our budget range, if it’s really something you’d even be comfortable _purchasing_ , all things considered. I’m sure Johnny and I can bruteforce it, but it might take a little longer. Give me a day or two.”

He kept his rigid back to the mercenary and winked at Sue, willing her to go along with his words. Based on the fact that Deadpool had gone through all the effort to not only come all the way back to the Baxter building with the rescued patients, but had, for some reason, waited for Spider-Man to return and was still standing there watching Sue and Peter banter about biochem, he was fairly certain that the merc didn’t actually plan on requesting payment for the decryption codes in the first place.

Nonetheless, Peter didn’t put it past him to take advantage of the opportunity for a cash grab if it did happen to arise. Not to mention, and not that he would admit it aloud, but he was still split between guilty and furious that he’d essentially helped Deadpool trap and murder people, albeit not purposefully, and even relatively petty insults to the value of his work were at least a minor form of payback against a man for whom physical harm healed too rapidly to bother and emotional harm had nowhere to find purchase.

“Ugh, here,” Deadpool interjected tersely with a noise of faint disgust and impatience as he pulled another thumb drive from one of his belt pouches and threw it at Peter. He caught the flying object easily without turning around and handed it to Sue, doing his best to keep the smugness from his posture. From the twitch of her lips and raised eyebrows, he didn’t do a very good job.

“Thank you, Wade,” she called out over Peter’s shoulder. Wait, _Wade_? Alright, apparently the Fantastic Four were on a first-name basis with the infamous, unkillable mercenary who had almost murdered Peter last winter for interfering with his “job.” No big deal. Sure.

“Oh! Um, no problem, Doctor Storm,” came the mutant’s startled reply. If Peter didn’t know him to be incapable of the feeling, he’d have said Deadpool sounded embarrassed.

“Do you have anything else useful that you can think of? Anything that might help me treat our new patients?” Sue asked Peter. He shook his head.

“No, I’ve given you everything that I have. I think our best lead is knowing that it came from the Goblin, but it’s got to be relatively new, since I’ve been checking in regularly and this is the first I’m seeing of it. I’m more worried about what they were planning on using it for, considering Oscorp’s track record after Goblin Round Two,” he explained.

“Alright,” she agreed. “I’ll let you know when I have something.”

“Thanks, Sue. Keep me updated on how the patients are doing too, yeah?”

“Of course. Will you be heading downstairs to see the boys?” Peter contemplated helping out with the work to make the visitors more at home. Several of the patients had seemed pretty uncomfortable with him though, and he’d probably end up distracting Johnny more than actually helping Ben and Reed. He also wanted to get Deadpool the hell away from powered folks he actually wanted to spend time with, as well as getting back out on the patrol he’d originally planned for the night.

“I should probably head back out, I think,” he said with a smile.

“Sounds like a plan, Spidey. Would you mind escorting our other visitor out as well?” Sue asked, nodding her head in Deadpool’s direction with a warm smile that was clearly meant to downplay the implications of her request.

“Sure thing, Sue,” Peter agreed easily. She hugged him tightly once again and waved them away, already immersed in her research. She was probably grateful that Peter had other pressing matters preventing him from getting into mischief with her brother, which was what usually happened when the two college-aged Alpha boys were in a room together for more than a few minutes.

Peter prepared himself to skirt carefully around Deadpool as he left the lab, spidey sense zinging up his spine the closer he got to the figure blocking the doorway. The merc turned and stalked out ahead of him wordlessly, then continued past the bank of windows in the moonlit atrium where Peter had first entered the building and toward the elevators at the center of the floor. Peter halted in the atrium, leaning with posed indifference against one of the potted trees.

“Hey, Deadpool,” he called down the hall, filled with a sudden burst of daring. If the Four knew him by name, there must be something about Deadpool that was at least useful enough to mitigate the damage he caused, if not outright redeemable. Plus, he had an idea for how he could get back at the Omega just a teensy bit for his duplicitous behavior back at the Oscorp lab. “Where are you going?”

“Thought you were showing me out so the Fantabulous Foursome didn’t have to keep dealing with me, Spider-Man,” the mercenary snarked in reply. Nonetheless, he turned around and made his way back toward Peter’s location.

“That I am,” he agreed with a forced perkiness that he hoped belayed his mild unease. He’d been in situations where he’d worked with the unpredictable mercenary before; knowing that he was an Omega in preheat should make him easier to handle, if anything. He toggled the hidden switch to open his preferred exit window and turned his back to the mutant. “Well, let’s go.”

The eyes of Deadpool’s mask went wide in the window’s mirrored reflection.

\- - -

“Aaaiiieeee!” Deadpool screeched and whooped as he clung tightly to Peter’s back after a particularly showy swoop from one building to another. Peter grimaced at the noise in his ear, but didn’t let that or the mutant’s not-insignificant weight alter his course as he swung from the Lower Manhattan high-rise southeast to one of his usual rooftop stops in Brownsville. People there tended to be a little happier to take a verbal dressing-down from the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man than the alternative of dealing with cops’ Alpha and Alpha-wannabe crap, and he figured that was as good a place as any to try to debrief Deadpool, considering how far removed it was from any affiliation with Oscorp Tower, the Baxter building, or, most importantly, anywhere Peter Parker was affiliated with, like his own apartment back in Forest Hills or ESU.

Touch-starved as he might have been, Peter also couldn’t enjoy the firmness and warmth of the body pressed against him as they moved, even with the other man quickly picking up on how to shift his bulk with Peter to make the transition between arcing swings as seamless as possible. Cold-blooded murderers and Omegas were both a big no-no as far as Spider-Man was concerned, even if the man graciously kept his heat-spiked scent well-concealed enough to almost allow Peter to forget the second one. 

Deadpool finally quieted after the first several minutes of webslinging, while they were crossing the Manhattan Bridge. Peter avoided looking at the bridge to his right as the merc’s whooping cries were replaced by a consistent muttered commentary. Most of the words were whipped away in the wind, even from his enhanced hearing, but what he did understand sounded almost like Deadpool was having half a conversation again.

At last, the hero alighted on his target rooftop, managing to stick the landing without stumbling under the unbalanced additional weight. He detached the mutant’s arms from around himself with a small amount of applied force, prompting the taller man to take his own weight. Peter backed off several steps.

“So… you actually helped me out quite a bit there,” he began.

“Sure looks like it, baby boy!” chirped Deadpool.

“I wanted to, ah,” Peter started again, then cleared his throat awkwardly. “I wanted to thank you for that, and for staying with Ben and the people we rescued all the way back to the Baxter building. I mean, you were also doing morally reprehensible work and committed unnecessary amounts of property damage and implicated me in your violence. That part was terrible, and I still don’t like you. But I still appreciated the help a lot.”

“Did you just thank me? Did he just thank me? This is going in mylimited edition Hello Kitty diary.” Deadpool waved his hands around excitedly. Peter rolled his eyes, glad that at least some of his expressions weren’t visible through the mask.

“Yes, I did. We’re not about to be best friends or anything, but we worked together better than I expected when there wasn’t a whole world-ending crisis and threats of disappointed looks from Cap forcing us to.”

“Yeah, gotta say, hanging out with The Thing tonight was way more fun than the time I lured you to Hoboken under false pretenses,” Deadpool agreed.

“I still can’t believe that a) you fell for that terrible info, and b) that _I_ fell for your ploy,” Peter shot back, trying not to crack a smile even if Deadpool wouldn’t be able to see it beneath his mask. This was part of why he kept the mercenary at arm’s length.

The man was a self-admitted reprehensible murderer, and yet somehow Peter still found himself bantering and sneaking appreciative glances. He even almost enjoyed their team-ups, rare as they were. Still, despite regular complaints about him, SHIELD still allowed the man to operate as a freelancer instead of throwing him in a dark cell underground somewhere. And anyway, more than one group of supers Peter worked with had teamed up with him, so he must have some redeeming qualities, right? It was the excuse Peter gave himself, at any rate.

“Hey, even the best still make mistakes sometimes. Anyway, if it weren’t for that and the time you so adorably decided to lecture me in the middle of a job, I might not have found you interesting enough to help, so there.”

“Why are you like this?”

“How much time you got, hot stuff?” Deadpool repeated.

“Okay, forget I asked,” Peter sighed. “I just wanted to thank you and take us both out of Doctor Storm’s hair, and I’ve done that. You can get back to whatever it is you do when you’re here, and I have a city to patrol. Please don’t make me have to protect it from you while you’re here.” 

“Psh, as if,” Deadpool scoffed. “Don’t get your spandex in a twist, pretty boy. I’m about to take a little vacation, remember?” He plucked at his sleeve, once again letting his previously well-contained pre-heat scent waft toward Peter, who once again tried to disguise his discomfort as he swallowed hard.

“Oh. Right, sorry. Well, after that, then. For however long you’ll be here,” Peter replied somewhat sheepishly.

“Yeah, sure thing,” Deadpool snorted. Peter was suddenly very ready to be done with this conversation and as far away from the Omega mercenary as possible.

“Alright, well, thanks again, see you around,” he said in a rush, turning to shoot his webs at a building down the street.

“‘I’ll see you around,’ he says! I’m pretty sure this means we’re about to become best buds. Wait until my diary hears about this!” Deadpool cheered to the sky.

“Give it a rest, buddy,” he sniped at the merc before swinging off into the night, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear his fatigue and scrambled thoughts. He still had a whole city full of people he was responsible for that he hadn’t had the chance to fail yet that night, after all. His own discomfort took second place to their safety. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who knows what my posting schedule is going to be, let's be brutally honest here. I'm sorry?
> 
> As usual, thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


	6. Don't Call It a Team-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deadpool wrangles Spider-Man into something resembling a shared patrol, then Wade thinks about Spidey wrangling him into a very different kind of tag-team.
> 
> 『White』 |「Yellow」

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: explicit sexual content including masturbation, anal sex, light bondage, and a light/implied BDSM dymanic

Wade was still stuck in a bit of a post-heat funk as he pulled a fresh mask over his head and finished gearing up. His last job had netted him a decent amount, even after paying for the motel room he’d been holed up in for the past week. The good karma he’d racked up with Spidey and the Four was definitely a bonus as well, even if it wasn’t exactly the gold star that he’d been hoping to get from SHIELD.

『 Oh, is that why we’re going back out? Is that why we’re staying in New York even though you don’t actually have a paying job right now? Hoping you’ll run into the webhead? 』

“He said he’d see me around! That’s practically an engraved invitation!” Wade protested. “And anyway, who said I’m going out because of him. Maybe I just want some fresh air.”

「 Because you always wear full tac gear for a stroll through Central Park. 」

“I could if I wanted to! Shut up,” he muttered defensively. The boxes laughed. Wade hated when they agreed on things.

He stomped out the door and down the stairs. By the time he reached the ground floor, he’d mostly worn out his annoyance, and the boxes had turned their attention to bickering about something else, which he could tune out a little more easily.

The deep red and hazy orange of the city’s smog-ridden sunset still colored the sky when he exited the building. He squinted in the theoretical direction of the midtown skyline, then tromped down the block to the rail platform. Maybe he’d get to Manhattan by the time the sun went all the way down.

He hoped he’d run into Spidey somewhere around the Baxter Building again, since the do-gooder would probably stop over some night soon for an update. The snatches of conversation he’d caught between the webslinger and members of the Four sounded like they might actually spend more time teaming up than anyone realized, or maybe even knew him outside of the mask. Nonetheless, Wade was willing to bet even Richards wasn’t cocky enough to let another hero develop an easily-intercepted pattern of visiting their tower.

The merc exited the perpetually muggy air and fluorescent glare of the 51st Street subway tunnel into the relative cool and darkness of the midtown Manhattan evening sometime later. “If I were a spider, where would I be on a Tuesday night?” he wondered aloud, wandering south past the Fantastic Four’s building toward Koreatown.

『 Probably webbing up hardworking folks just doing innocent, small-time crime in sketchy dark alleys. 』

「 Yeah, ever notice how he’s always bagging small-timers and never taking down the real criminals? If Spider-Man were a real hero, he’d be webbing up half of Wall Street instead! 」

“That’s enough color commentary from you, _comrades._ Anyway, he totally knocks out big-timers,” Wade scoffed. “What about that sand guy? Or sparky sparky boom man? The theater kid with the fishbowl helmet?”

He paused for a moment to reflect. “Man, this dude has some tacky villains. Look, you’re distracting me from my whole thing here. I’m trying to think like a spandexy twunk here.” After fruitlessly meandering down several blocks, he decided he might as well make his way toward Central Park anyway. Maybe someone would be hoodwinking tourists with some nonsense on their way out of the zoo. Hoodwinking was the sort of thing Spidey was real into stopping, right?

Sure enough, Wade found the webslinger in the park. The guy was lecturing a group of boys who’d been grinding on curbs and doing half-assed flips on a low set of stairs on safety. He watched the exchange with amusement, lingering in the shadows a ways away. Only Spider-Man (alright, and maybe Captain America) could make teenagers feel bad for not wearing a helmet.

The kids promised Spider-Man that they would head over to the LES park next time and during actual park hours instead, then wandered off. Wade approached the hero. “And get a darn helmet! A TBI is no laughing matter!” Spidey yelled after the teens.

“Friendly neighborhood spider indeed!” Wade called out, clapping slowly as he approached. “That’s the kind of grassroots heroing this city needs.”

Spider-Man jerked around to face him. “Deadpool? What the heck?”

『 Isn’t this guy supposed to be able to sense danger ahead of time? Doesn’t this idiot here count as danger? 』

「 R U D E 」

“You know, you can call me Wade,” he said to the spider with a slight frown. Had he somehow managed to surprise the young hero? That was odd. Wade was pretty sure the guy was supposed to have some kind of precognitive ability that prevented things like that.

“Uh-huh. What are you doing here, Deadpool?” Alright, so Spider-man was just going to ignore that little overture of friendship, then. Wade supposed it was fair. It really hadn’t been that long since he’d had Spidey on the wrong end of a katana.

“Finished up my little vacation, didn’t have any plans lined up after,” he replied, keeping his tone nonchalant. “Figured I could hang around the Big Apple for a little bit. It’s been a minute since I last visited the city with time to kill instead of people.”

“I’d prefer you weren’t here at all if killing people figures into your plans in any way,” Spider-Man said stiffly, mask remaining impassive in spite of the implied threat.

“To be fair, I wasn’t actually _planning_ to unalive those so-called doctors at Oscorp,” Wade reminded him. “I was only getting paid for a data retrieval mission. That was all pro bono, baby.”

“Yeah, and thanks to you, Dr. Storm has limited data to go on for treating those patients, instead of a live scientist to question,” Spidey retorted.

“Yeah yeah, okay.” The mutant held up his hands in defeat. “Look, I didn’t come out here to pick a fight with you, webhead.”

“Then what did you come out here for?”

Wade shrugged. “Dunno. Wanted to check in on how the, um, patients are doing. Figured I’d be able to get ahold of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man more easily than Mr. Fantastic.”

“Oh.” The blank, white lenses on Spidey’s mask blinked. “They’re actually doing surprisingly okay, from what Johnny says. Dr. Storm has been giving them a mix of suppressants to mitigate the worst of the side-effects while she works on stabilizing or reversing the intended effects of the experiments.”

“Well that’s… that’s good to hear,” Wade said with a nod.

Spider-Man kept that blank stare trained on him for another long moment before looking elsewhere. “Was that all?”

Now it was Wade’s turn to look away. “We did a good job together, didn’t we? That was fun.”

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we could… do that again sometime? Or something.”

When Wade flicked his gaze back, the hero’s wide-eyed mask was trained on his own disguised face. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Well damn, Webs, don’t beat around the bush.”

“I’m serious. Why would I want to intentionally team up with you?”

『 He’s got a point. 』

Wade cast his gaze around desperately for inspiration. 

「 Dat ass is inspiration. 」

“I don’t know. Weren’t we a good team when I was actually listening to you? Is it that hard to believe that I might want to be, y’know, better? This stuff—” here he gestured to the more obvious weapons on his person “—can get a little old. Maybe I just want to see if I can do something new.”

“Uh-huh.” Despite his obvious suspicion, Spider-Man edged closer as Wade spoke, as if he were drawn in by the picture the merc was painting in spite of himself.

“Hey, if anyone can teach me how to be a good guy and make it stick, it’s you, right? That’s your whole, like, thing.” Wade shrugged. “I get it if you don’t want to though. I wouldn’t trust me either. And hey, I’ll try to do a little better research first the next time someone tries to point my gun in your direction,” he said with a weak laugh.

“Wait!” Spidey said, just a hair too loudly to be casual. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean…” The webslinger sighed deeply. “Fine. We can try this. You’re right, I can’t exactly imagine the Black Widow or Squirrel Girl taking you out on training patrols, and Squirrel Girl is even a Canadian. Plus, Tippy-Toe would play havoc with your arsenal.”

“Tippy…?”

“Don’t ask. All I’m sayin’ is, never underestimate a member of the family Sciuridae wielding a screwdriver.”

“Well that’s refreshingly vague and ominous, Spidey, thanks,” Wade glowered. Spider-Man tossed his head back and laughed, clearly taken off-guard. It wasn’t fair how that gave Wade stupid butterflies in his stomach and made him want to try to keep making him laugh as much as he could.

「 Suckerrrrr. 」

“Soooooo… was that a yes?” the merc asked when the hero finally got himself back under control a few moments later.

“That’s a yes,” Webs confirmed.

“Woo-hoo, team-up!” cheered Wade, pumping a fist in the air. “Spider-Man and Deadpool, the dynamic duo the fans didn’t know they wanted until they got what they needed!”

“Don’t call it a team-up,” Spidey complained, scrunched brow and jutting jaw visible through his mask.

“It’s a team-up,” Wade insisted. “What else d’you want me to call it? Let’s get a couple dogs and celebrate. My treat.”

The change of topic worked well enough to make the hero drop it, at least for the moment, and let Wade chatter on as they made their way through Central Park to find an open hot dog stand. The two of them were walking back down a gravel path through the park with fully-loaded dogs when Spider-Man spoke abruptly.

“Sorry about the whole, uh y’know, scent thing before your heat. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. Omegas can just be a little much, sometimes.” Spidey’s white lenses went wide as he seemed to realize how that sounded. “Not that I think all Omegas are too much to handle or something! Just that, like, with the super senses and all. Some people’s pheromones can get a little overwhelming. Especially Omegas, for me at least. I'm just making this worse, aren’t I? I’m sorry,” he rambled.

The webhead hunched his shoulders and ducked his head. Wade was suffering from secondhand embarrassment even without being able to smell the guy through whatever industrial-grade filters he had in that suit. It was kind of adorable, honestly.

“Hey, we’re good!” Wade said cheerfully. “No big deal, Webs. Super senses gotta be a bitch, huh?”

“Yeahhh,” Spidey agreed, rubbing the back of his neck as he drew out the word. That seemed to be enough to relax the hero, and the pair sat downon a bench to finish their snacks.

“Alright, well I still have a patrol to finish,” Webs said meaningfully, hopping up to toss his trash into a nearby can. Little goodie two-shoes. He turned back to Wade with a little wave. “See you tomorrow! Let’s meet in East Harlem this time? I’ve been trying to swing by a little more often these days, show some solidarity. You know where the 116 Street stop is?” Wade nodded.

『 You have no idea where that is. 』

Wade did not, in fact, have the slightest idea where the 116 Street stop was, or even if it was a light rail terminal or a bus stop, but he had a smart phone and unlimited data. The mercenary had every faith in his own ability to use Google Maps to find a goddamn subway station.

“There’s a taquería on the northwest corner near that stop. Meet me on the roof. Around 8?” the hero asked brightly.

“Uhhh,” Wade wavered for a moment. Truthfully, he was still pretty thrown off that Spidey hadn’t required more convincing. “Yeah. Yes! Definitely. Tomorrow.” He watched the webslinger leap easily from the ground to the top of the streetlamp overhead, then into the thick foliage of the trees bordering the pathway they’d been wandering down in the general direction of a park exit. Well, that all went better than expected.

“Second date with Spider-Man! Score!” he whisper-yelled.

“Not a date!” the webslinger called out as he flipped neatly from one of the high-up branches to the next. Wade watched with barely-contained glee as the hero thwipped his way out of the park at breakneck speed, then swung around a building and out of sight.

The boxes snickered. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a date. That still wasn’t going to stop Wade from thinking about it.

\- - -

“Fuck, that hurt!” Wade yelped as he was slammed into the grimy concrete wall. “What gives, Webs?”

“What gives? _What gives_?!” Spider-Man practically growled at him, wrenching Wade’s arm behind his back and pinning him in place. “What do you _think_? Is the word ‘nonlethal’ simply not in your vocabulary? I just had to pull you off those guys!”

“Well they were bad guys! What’s the problem?” Wade asked belligerently. Despite the tone, he forced himself to relax into the hold, grunting as something in his elbow popped unpleasantly. Keeping his cool under pressure wasn’t exactly his specialty even before he had boxes egging him on, but he really didn’t want to lash out at the hero. And anyway, he could live with it if he kept getting the full-body press over here.

「 Guh. 」

“The _problem_ , you jerk, is that it’s my job to protect people, including the guys I’m attempting to talk down from a mugging! I can’t do that if you hop in ready to chop off a leg!” Spidey lectured. Wade started to edge his free hand toward his belt, but barely moved an inch before the webslinger pinned his wrist to the wall and webbed it in place. “Am I going to have to yank you away from every fight and web you up until you cool off? Because that really doesn’t seem like it benefits my patrols, or more importantly my city, in any way.”

The hero’s body pressed even tighter against him to immobilize him fully against the concrete. A little more scolding and Wade would definitely be noticeably more than half-hard, and there wouldn’t be any hiding that in the suit. Oh yeah, that was the good stuff right there. 

『 You’re disgusting. 』

“Okay, okay!” Wade yelped, frowning beneath the mask. He wasn’t altogether sure if White had just been successful in shaming him, or if he was actually feeling the teensiest bit bad about making Spidey’s life harder. “No unaliving _or_ serious maiming while I’m hanging out with you, got it. Jeez, Webs, you drive a real hard bargain.”

Spider-Man released the mercenary by using his body as a platform to vault up onto the wall. Wade didn’t miss how this put the webslinger’s lithe body well out of his reach as he clung to the cracked concrete panels of the second story. “No killing or serious injury while you’re in New York City. Not if we’re working together.”

Wade tugged hard at his webbed-up hand. “Yeah sure, okay, whatever. You gonna help me out here?”

The hero snorted. “I’m real convinced.”

The merc held up his free hand, little finger out. “I pinkie-swear that I will not do any gratuitous murders or grievous bodily harm whilst in the city of New York and patrolling with its least favorite wallcrawler. Can I have my hand back now?”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Can I _please_ have my hand back now?”

Spider-man dipped down from his place on the wall to rip the webbing free like so much rice paper. “It’ll come off your glove in about an hour.”

“Maybe this is why no one likes you. If your services were on Yelp, you’d have like two stars.”

Spidey crossed his arms. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know that e _veryone_ likes me.”

“Everyone, huh? What about old ‘ _Get me pictures of Spider-Man!’_ at The Bugle?” Wade asked, shaking his tropically-scented fist and doing an excellent imitation of J.K. Simmons, if he said so himself.

“Average New Yorker rates Spider-Man an eight out of ten. J. Jonah Jameson, who rates Spider-Man a negative four out of ten and a menace, is an outlier and should not have been counted,” the webhead sniffed primly, crouching back on his haunches. This new position was fine with Wade, who now had an excellent view of the hero’s tight body as he practically lounged on the wall above him.

「 Did I mention **guh**. 」

“Uh-huh,” Wade said dubiously. “So are we done now?”

“Depends. Are you sure you’re done getting stabby with perps and then with me when I have to rescue them from you?”

Wade rolled his eyes. “I just said that, didn’t I?”

Spidey dropped back down to the ground in front of him almost silently. “I just think you can do better, Deadpool. You rescued all those people at Oscorp—“

“Psh, just part of the job,” Wade said, waving it away.

“—Even though you actually didn’t have to help me out,” Spidey pressed on. “And then you hopped in Ben’s van with them and stuck around until they started to settle in up at the tower to help them feel like someone was watching out for them. That’s not nothing, big guy.”

「Ha! Oh, that’s a good one.」

『I bet the kid thinks you’re actually a _good guy_ underneath it all.』

「Wonder what you can convince him to do for the good cause of your redemption arc.」

“Sure, fine, whatever,” Wade said.

“I mean it.” Spider-Man lightly cuffed his shoulder, clearly telegraphing the move so Wade could dodge it if he really wanted to. “You free tomorrow?”

The merc shrugged noncommittally. He’d already been overeager enough, and look where that had gotten him.

“Let’s do Red Hook this time. I have some intel on some hinky goings-on at the docks that might be related to Oscorp’s ill-fated gender lab rats. Should be an afternoon shipment.”

“Well at least _some_ criminals know how not to draw attention to their shady smuggling,” the mutant drawled.

“Say two o’clock?” Spidey asked. Wade could practically hear his eyes rolling. “Could take a little while.”

“Stakeout, huh? Fun stuff. I’ll bring the snacks.”

Spider-Man snorted. “Good-bye, Deadpool.” He walked toward the mouth of the narrow alley before climbing up the wall again to thwip off.

「Dat ass tho.」

『Is that literally all you think about?』

「Have you looked at it? Guh.」

Wade forced himself to push the chatter into the background. “I’m going to have to get a second place in New York, aren’t I?” he wondered aloud.

「 Why would you do that? We got the DeadHut and a mostly-working teleportation belt. 」

“What if Spidey wants to come over some day?”

『 Sure, that’ll be the day. 』

Wade ignored the interjection. “I can’t just invite him to teleport to San Francisco!”

「 Why not? 」

“Because ‘Hold onto my buff and manly chest and close your eyes, I swear I won’t sex-murder you and hey also try not to throw up while we pop across the country’ somehow just isn’t very convincing,” Wade retorted, rolling his eyes.

「 Well when you put it **that** way… 」

『 I can’t fucking believe you’re going to get an apartment just to hang out with this fucking stick-up-his-ass do-gooder. 』

「 I wanna be the stick up his ass. Guh. 」

『 Yes, you’ve both made your position very clear. And you’re still disgusting. 』

“Ya just can’t argue with the Spider-Butt, White. Gotta admit, cha boi Yellow has a point there.”

『 Good enough to move a bunch of your shit to New York? 』

“Uuugggghhh, I hate moving,” Wade groaned melodramatically, dropping his head back against the wall. 

『 Hah. 』

The merc brightened. “Hey, at least SHIELD’s main office is out here too! I should give Scott and Emily a call. Maybe they have some legally-sanctioned work so I can pay for my new digs. Spidey’s gonna be so proud!”

\- - -

Yellow’s obsessive erotic poetry aside, “that ass” was fucking right when it came to the webhead. That everything, honestly. Little do-gooder had no right to look so hot in a unitard. Wade was still sporting a half-chub from his encounter with Spider-Man in the alleyway when he rematerialized in his hotel room. Using the belt to get anywhere that wasn’t preprogrammed in was a little dicey (especially when he didn’t have Weasel on-hand to key in new coordinates whenever he needed him), but the mutant wasn’t about to spend forty-five minutes on public transit to let the sense-memory of getting slammed into a wall so hard that it cracked the concrete just fade.

『 Your priorities are so fucked. 』

「 No, no. He’s got a point. 」

The mercenary stalked further into the room and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed. He hastily unclasped his utility belt and undid his fly, not bothering to pull the leathers any farther down his body than he had to. He slipped his cock out from the fly of his boxers and began to loosely stroke it with one leather-clad fist. As he leaned back on his free hand and spread his legs a little, Wade began to fantasize about what would have happened if Spidey had found himself getting a little tight around the web-shooter while he was trying to knock some sense into the mutant. Fuck, even the lecturing had been kind of hot…

_“Fuck, that hurt!” Wade yelps as he’s slammed into the grimy concrete wall. “What gives, Webs?”_

_“What gives?_ What gives?! _” Spider-Man practically growls at him, wrenching Wade’s arm behind his back and pinning him in place. The merc suppresses a shiver at the way the sound seemed to travel right through him. “What do you think? Is the word ‘nonlethal’ simply not in your vocabulary? I just had to pull you off those guys!”_

_“Well they were bad guys! What’s the problem?” The mercenary asks belligerently._ Wade remembered how Spidey had yanked his arm up even higher up his back after that, the pain and immobility of the position going straight to Wade’s cock even as it forced their bodies closer together. He forced himself to keep a steady speed as he continued to stroke himself, imagining how that encounter might have continued differently.

_“The_ problem _, you jerk, is that it’s my job to protect people, including the guys I’m attempting to talk down from a mugging! I can’t do that if you hop in ready to chop off a leg!” Spidey lectures. Wade starts to edge his free hand toward his belt, but barely moves an inch before the webslinger pins his wrist to the wall and webs it in place._

_“Am I going to have to yank you away from every fight and web you up until you cool off? Because that really doesn’t seem like it benefits me very much.”The hero’s voice deepens as he continues, and his body presses even tighter against Wade to immobilize him fully against the concrete. “Or are you going to give me a better incentive to keep_ teaming up _with you?” Spidey rocks his hips forward a little, grinding up against the merc’s ass. He is definitely_ not _wearing a cup._

_Wade groans and drops his masked face to rest against the grimy wall. He stops trying to free his hand and finds himself pushing back against Spidey’s cock instead. “Fuck,” he grinds out, unbidden, as the hero thrusts harder against him, teasing through all that spandex and kevlar. “I’m so good at teamwork. The best.”_

_“Is that so? I might need you to prove it.” The webslinger works a hand down the front of Wade’s pants. “Do you think you can work with me here?”_

_“Yes!” Wade yells frantically, scrabbling at the wall with his free arm. Spider-Man wraps his long, gloved fingers around Wade’s dick and starts to stroke it._

Wade spat into his glove and gripped his dick tighter, not really minding the friction of the leather or slight chafe of the seams against his sensitive skin.

_“Yeah? Are you actually going to try to be a good guy? Can you do what I tell you to do?” Spidey asks as his pace increases._ Wade fisted his cock more quickly.

_“Yes, yes, please,” comes the babbling response._

_“Can you be good? Do you want to be good for me, Wade?” the hero asks again, more softly._ In Wade’s head, Webs was nicer to him than he tended to be in real life. More patient. Softer. And he wasn’t going to think about that, or the boxes were going to get too loud to ignore.

_“Please, yes, anything you want! I’ll be good, I want to be good,” Wade moans._

Wade gripped himself around the base of his dick, just below the soft flesh of his small Omega knot. He could feel the slick dampening his boxers, making them cling to his ass and legs. The simple little fantasy was getting to him much more intensely than he’d anticipated; he didn’t usually get wet so quickly.

He haphazardly pulled the red leather under his asscheeks, annoyed at his own impatience. Thinking about the tightly-muscled hero had his body dripping and begging to be filled, no soreness leftover from his heat thanks to his mutation. Unfortunately, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to open his legs enough with the suit on to meet his own needs, not without getting fully onto the bed in a presentation position to reach his hole properly or stopping to actually take off his pants and boots.

After a half-second of hesitation, Wade crawled onto the dingy hotel mattress. Partial nudity sounded better than being all alone with his ass in the air and jerking off to some Beta whose real face he didn’t even know. At least he could get under the sheets this way. Might as well take off the gloves too. Spidey probably would. He seemed like the kind of guy who knew how to treat a boy. If he liked boys. Or Omegas. Wade’s erection started to flag a little. Nope, not going there, Swiss cheese brain.

The merc kicked off his combat boots and stripped off the leather-and-kevlar pants and gloves, finally shucking his soaked boxers and sliding under the sheets. He let his left hand slip past his sack, giving it a brief squeeze of pleasure-pain before starting to tease at his own ass. Finally, he swiped his right hand through the slick and started stroking his half-hard dick again, trying to refocus. 

_“Can you be good? Do you want to be good for me, Wade?” the hero asks again, more softly. “I want you to be a good boy for me.”_

_“Yes, anything you want! I’ll be good, I want to be good,” Wade moans. “Please let me be a good boy for you, Webs, fuck.”_

_He can’t see much of the webslinger’s facial expressions through the mask, but he imagines that Spidey smiles at that. The hero undoes Wade’s fly and pulls the bottom half of the suit just under his cheeks. His only reaction to the plump, scarred flesh is to begin kneading and spreading it._

_“I can smell you, all slicked up for me already. Is that all it takes? I just web you to a wall and rub my cock up against you?” Spidey teases. Wade’s only response is a small whimper. “You like that I can pin you down even without the webbing, don’t you? Big guy like you, hard to find someone who can manhandle you right, huh? Well I’m happy to oblige.”_

_Spidey ruts up against the merc, heedless of the mess of slick getting all over the front of his costume. The gloved hand that isn’t pinning Wade’s free arm down slips between them to tease at Wade’s hole. Before he knows it, Spidey has pushed up his own mask over his nose and pulled the glove off with his teeth. One bare finger slides easily inside the Omega. There’s only the slightest resistance as a second finger is added. Wade presses his forehead hard into wall to stop from fucking himself on just those two fingers and embarrassing himself any further._

_“Oh fuck, you’re so wet,” Spidey groans, thrusting against Wade’s ass in time with his fingers like he can tell that the Omega is already struggling not to beg for it. For his part, Wade is still pressing his face into the wall and biting his lip to hold back a whimper._

_The webslinger removes his fingers, but keeps Wade in place by clamping his teeth right over the scent gland where the Omega’s mask tucks into the collar of his suit. There’s a rustling noise behind Wade, and then his brain shorts out for a second because Spider-Man’s cockhead is rubbing up against his asshole, getting covered in the fresh gush of slick this causes him to produce._

_“Oh my god, please let me have it,” Wade demands in an embarrassingly breathy voice. Spidey teases him by continuing to just barely press his cock into him, over and over. “Please!” he whines, trying to push back onto the Beta’s thick length._

_“Be good,” the hero reminds him, pulling away a little. He releases Wade’s hand to grip his own cock and guides it properly into Wade. The Omega groans in satisfaction at the feeling._

The mercenary pushed two fingers into himself, groaning at the sensation. He clenched down on them for a moment, then started to fuck himself eagerly. His other hand alternated between jerking off and rolling his balls between his fingers when the feeling became too overwhelming.

_“Why don’t you stroke that pretty little Omega cock for me?” Spidey prods as he rocks into Wade’s body. “Oh god, you’re so warm. God fucking damn it, you feel good.” His pace increases a little, like now he’s the one that can’t help himself. He’s plastered to Wade’s back at this point, touching him at every possible point of contact._

_“Come on, I want to watch you play with yourself while I fuck you,” the Beta coaxes. Wade obliges after another experimental tug at the arm that’s still webbed up, stroking his dick with his free hand._

_“Sorry, you’re not getting that hand back for a while,” Spidey says. He’s rutting into the Omega without faltering and still unfairly coherent despite it. “I like being able to keep you just where I want you, so I can fill you up all I want. I’m gonna leave you fucked out and dripping with my cum,” he promises._

_Wade can feel the pleasure starting to build as he strokes his textured cock with a leather-gloved hand. Spidey makes a pleased noise as he watches from over Wade’s shoulder. “That’s it, good boy. Show me how much you like it.” The Omega feels himself getting wetter as the webslinger praises him, making the sound of their bodies slapping together even more obscene._

_“You’re so slick and ready for me, I could probably shove the rest of it in you and blow my knot right in your tight ass,” Spidey taunts, and Wade moans wordlessly in response. “Is that what you want? You want me to come in your stretched out hole and keep you filled up with my knot?”_

_“Yeah! Yes, I want it,” Wade finds his words well enough to agree. His head drops back onto the Beta’s shoulder, relaxed and almost trusting. “Fuck, please fill me up.”_

The Omega pressed a third finger into himself, moaning at the slight stretch. His hand was covered in his own slick at this point, as wet as he can ever remember being outside of a heat. He teasingly stroked his glans, shuddering at the intensity of the feeling and the way it made him clench around his fingers.

_“Keep playing with that dick and moaning like that, and you just might get it.” The webslinger bites playfully at Wade’s exposed throat. He resumes his earlier pace, pressing his inflating knot steadily against Wade’s rim. Soon, he starts to slam harder into Wade, pulling the larger man’s hips back to meet each thrust. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum right in that tight little ass. Come on, tighten up on my cock. I want to feel you,” he urges, grabbing one scarred cheek and spreading the other man’s ass. Wade quickly complies, clenching his muscles, and Spidey growls in his ear. “Oh fuck yeah, good boy. You want my cum, huh?”_

Wade’s head was buzzing with arousal at the filthy mouth on his imaginary hero. He was so slick that his fingers were covered in it and making a lewd squelching noise as he rocked down onto them.

_“Yeah, give it to me, please. I want to feel you cum so hard in me that it empties you out.” He keeps stroking his dick, muscles clenching and unclenching around the cock splitting him open._

_Spidey wraps one arm around Wade’s middle and the other hand around his throat. “Yeah? You’re gonna fucking get it then.” His pace quickens yet again as he easily lifts Wade to meet his thrusts over and over again. “Ah fuck! Fuck!” Wade feels the Beta’s hot spend fill him, but Spidey carefully keeps his knot outside of Wade’s body. He whines and writhes on the hero’s cock like he’s been pinned there, trying valiantly to fuck himself down onto those last couple of inches._

_Spidey holds him in place and presses his oversensitive knot against the Omega’s hole with a low growl. “Look at you, still dripping slick all over my cock. Do you want it that bad?” Wade nods, completely shameless. “I bet I could just slip this knot right in you, you’re so wet and desperate for it. Maybe we should find out.”_

_The hero presses a couple of gloved fingers against the pink rim pulled taut around his cock. With only a small amount of pressure, they slide in the slicked-up, desperate Omega alongside his still-hard length, opening him up. “Look at how well you took that,” he praises. “I think you really are ready for it.”_

_“Oh god, please fucking give it to me already. I need it,” Wade begs. He pumps his dick as Spidey thrusts hard, finally slamming that knot into him, filling and stretching him perfectly. The Beta shudders at the tight squeeze on his still-blown knot and presses his teeth against Wade’s shoulder hard enough to be felt through the leather and kevlar. Wade feels his balls tighten up, and he knows he won’t be able to hold off for much longer, if at all._

The merc pressed a fourth finger into his hole, suppressing the urge to purr in satisfaction at the stretch. He urgently fisted his dick in time with the movement of his fingers.

_“Can I cum?” he asks frantically, still trying to show Spidey that he can be as good as the hero wants him to be. “Can I cum, please, can I cum?”_

_“Yes, come on, cum right now,” Spidey orders, pressing his whole body tight against Wade, and the Omega shudders as his seed paints the wall in front of him. “Good boy, Wade. Get it all out. Good boy.”_

As Wade finally came, thighs tensing and ass clenching tight around his fingers, he bit his lip hard to stifle a cry. He stroked his knot as he rode out the final surge of his orgasm. The Omega dragged his hand through the mix of slick and jizz, squeezing along his oversensitive dick to get the last few drops. He slowly slid the fingers of his other hand from his ass, the slight amount of overstimulation almost enough to make him consider a second round.

『 Well, that sure happened. 』

「 **Guh.** 」

『 Too bad the webhead doesn’t like Omegas. 』

And just like that, post-orgasmic haze cleared. Wade’s shoulders slumped. He did a cursory job of wiping up the cum and slick on the sheets and yanked his pants back on without having to look at himself.

「 We can still be friends though. Maybeee… sex friends? 」

『 Name one person who’s made friends with this idiot without getting paid by someone, getting imprisoned by him, or trying to murder him. 』

Wade flopped back on the bed and buried his head in the pillows. “Fuck you guys,” he mumbled. “I can make friends.”

「 Press X to doubt. 」

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I am return (to this fic)!
> 
> I've been having a lot of trouble getting the middle few chapters of this fic to work for me, but it's been so long that I thought it was only fair to just post what's been done and edited to death already. I hope that I can wrangle the next few chapters soon because I'm really excited about the rest of it.
> 
> Please do not press X to doubt.
> 
> As usual, thanks to [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


	7. Short Fuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look, Peter's already having a hard time balancing grad school and Spider-Man without having a nervous breakdown. A stakeout with Deadpool is _not_ the secret ingredient to making that any less stressful, no matter how many Capri-Suns he brings with him.

Peter sighed as he walked out of his thesis chair’s office, rubbing at the dark circles under his eyes. Dr. Lamaze’s admin assistant glanced over sympathetically from her computer screen.

“Rough review?” she asked, shooting him a soft smile. “If it makes you feel any better, Anna Maria left his office crying earlier.”

“Thanks for the sympathy, Deb,” Peter responded with a snort. “At this rate, I’m going to be spending an extra week just on the footnotes for my intro. Forget putting hours into CAD working on a functional device, right? It’s _way_ more important that I make sure I’m citing Lamaze instead of, say Pym or McCoy’s research.” He snorted and shook his head.

Debra rolled her eyes. “Obviously. To be fair, you brought this on yourself by choosing Lamaze as your supervisor.”

“Oh yeah, what am I going to do? Hunt down Reed Richards to chair my thesis committee the next time he comes back from space?” Peter asked sarcastically.

Anyway, he’d tried that already, and Reed and Sue had both been too busy containing some new xenobiological threat to even hear him out properly. Then Johnny had pointed out that regular old Peter Parker didn’t have any feasible way that he’d be able to pull the favors to ever get in contact with the country’s preeminent research physician and astrophysicist, much less snag either of them for something so tedious as a thesis committee. It was true, but the flaming knot-thot didn’t have to rub it in.

“Okay, point taken,” the blonde laughed, adjusting her glasses. “You’ll be fine, Pete. Lamaze just wants to see that your data is solid and that you put enough background biochem to explain your project. Alright, _and_ that you’re citing his research whenever possible,” she conceded at Peter’s skeptical look. “Sanchez and Lanning are going to be happy with just the specs of a theoretical device, and they’ll be over the moon if you 3D print a model and put a diagram on your PowerPoint. You don’t need to lose anymore sleep over it.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the grad student replied, stifling a yawn. He’d been up late the night before (as usual, because crime never sleeps and apparently neither can Spider-Man), first working on his actual schoolwork, then reaching out to Ben for yet another update on Sue’s research, before finally doing more remote scouting on the computer systems of the industrial warehouses he was planning on investigating the next day with Deadpool. He even considered asking whichever of the new Avengers was on call to do more research into the more recent activities of his new “partner,” just to see how much he’d have to be watching his own back, but by then the sun was starting to peek around the top floors of the surrounding buildings.

“I appreciate the pep talk,” he continued once he finished the interminable yawn, uncovering his mouth and flashing Debra a half-smile. “I’ve already booked all the time I can in the materials lab for the week anyway. Catch you later, Deb.”

Peter departed the office with a wave at the patient, long-suffering woman. Debra always gave a smile and a wave when he passed her desk, and she made time to chat with him and ask about his work both in and out of the chem department whenever he stopped to say hi. If the pretty blonde hadn’t been an Omega, Peter probably would have put some serious thought into asking her out. As it was, he still found himself somewhat tempted when her scent was muted.

The hero discreetly checked his SpiderPhone to see if his bots had any updates, then tucked it away and switched back to his standard StarkPhone. On his way out of the building and toward one of the nearby unsurveilled rooftops, he dialed a number he hadn’t reached out to in longer than he ought to have done.

“Hello?” came a soft voice through the phone.

“Hi, Aunt May,” he greeted warmly.

“Peter? How are you, dear? It’s been at least a week since your last call!” she admonished.

“It’s been five days!” Peter laughed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been slammed between my thesis and grading midterms. I’ll try to call sooner next time.” As much as he missed his aunt’s homemade Italian cooking, it was more important to keep the likelihood of any possible association being made between her and Spider-Man to a minimum. Norman had taught him that hard lesson, and Harry had cemented it.

“That professor works all of you so hard! Don’t you TAs have a union now?” May asked with a laugh of her own.

“I still have to show up and teach!” Peter protested.

“If you say so,” the older woman sniffed. “You could just give them all a B+ and be done with it. Maybe then you’d have time to visit and paint my kitchen like you’ve been promising for weeks.”

Peter glanced around the narrow street between buildings, then leaned casually against a wall of rugface brick. He needed to wait to actual climb up and change until he could turn off his phone to ensure its location couldn’t be pinged (sure, he could just turn off location tracking in general, but sometimes a guy wants to play Pokemon Go or use UberEats, and there was no guarantee his phone couldn’t just get hacked anyway). He had plenty of time until he was scheduled to meet up with Deadpool, so he was happy to spend more time talking to Aunt May.

“What happened to my dear, sweet old aunt who taught me all about hard work and doing the right thing? Anyway—”

“She decided that her nephew getting some sleep and occasionally having real food was occasionally more important,” May interrupted. “Now stop sassing me. My weak, _old_ heart can’t take it.”

The brunette snorted. “Sure, Aunt May. Anyway, I’m more worried about getting a single chapter of my darn thesis finished than grading a hundred chemistry exams. I’m sure glad I got started on my research over the summer, or I’d be worried.”

“Oh, Peter, I’m sure you’ll be fine. My little genius,” his aunt dismissed breezily. They continued their conversation on for another quarter of an hour, until Aunt May had properly updated Peter on the goings-on of his old neighborhood and her own gardening and volunteer work around the borough.

Peter had even successfully suppressed a wince at May’s heavy-handed mentions of MJ’s several visits to her own family home next door and the redhead’s updates on Harry’s slowly improving condition at the inpatient facility. He couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by his failures any more than he already was, as this strange new case at Oscorp proved.

“Well, it was great to catch up with you,” he said. “I’m about to head down to the train, okay?”

“Alright, dear,” May agreed. “Give me another call soon. And it would be nice to see my busy little engineer before your spring vacation.”

“Of course,” he reassured her without any specific plans or dates, repressing no small amount of guilt. “Bye, Aunt May.”

“Good-bye, Peter.” As soon as May hung up, Peter switched his phone off and rapidly, near-silently scaled the fire escape he’d been loitering near.

A quick scan confirmed that the roof was empty of both humans and CCTV, so he ducked behind the dual cover of the HVAC unit and concrete parapet to change into his uniform. He relaxed minutely after slipping on the mask, but wasn’t fully in character, so to speak, until he’d finished up the final adjustments to his utility belt and web-shooters.

Peter briefly swapped out a standard web cartridge to web his school bag to the top of the mechanical unit with the one cartridge of long-lasting webbing formula he normally carried with him for just this purpose. It only took one backpack dropping into a full restaurant dumpster because he couldn’t get back to it before the webbing disintegrated to teach him to use an early, non-degrading form of the fluid to keep his things safe. It had been a little trickier to develop a solvent for it that didn’t also damage whatever was being webbed up, but he’d been pretty bored without a project that spring break anyway.

Once his bag and civilian clothes were safely stowed away, the webslinger exchanged the cartridge for his standard formula. He hopped up onto the parapet, balancing effortlessly on the aluminum coping cap despite the fine coating of grit and pigeon droppings. One well-placed shot of web fluid later, he was swinging his way across the city to meet up with his least-favorite mercenary.

Maybe “least-favorite” wasn’t the best superlative for Peter to apply to Deadpool. There was actually potential for the two of them to work well together, and the mercenary was on the short list of people who were happy to quip along with Spider-Man through almost any circumstances. Peter also couldn’t help noticing how well the man filled out his body armor or how gracefully, if chaotically, he moved in battle. Besides, it was unfair to entirely write off someone who said they were trying to be a better person and who was actually asking for help, no matter how suspicious Peter was of their motivations.

The hero was interrupted in his musings by the sharp zing of his spidey sense up his spine and a soft shuffling noise off to his left. He whirled to face the threat, and was met with the sight of a rather sheepish-looking Deadpool.

“Uh… hey, Webs,” the hulking mercenary greeted with an aborted wave.

“What are you—How did you—” Peter spluttered, more than a little disturbed at how easy it had been for Deadpool to get so close before Peter had any warning of his presence. “Get down!” He hissed, then yanked the larger man behind the same cluster vent housing he was using as cover on the rooftop across from the warehouse the pair was meant to be staking out.

“See? I told you he wouldn’t like being snuck up on,” Deadpool muttered over his shoulder. “No, he’s not impressed, look at him.”

“Who are you _talking_ to?” the webslinger demanded in an attempt to mask his unease.

“Boxes,” Deadpool replied, forgoing any further elaboration. “Sorry about that. Teleportation belt. Easier than rolling a stealth check and climbing up here.”

Peter’s annoyance was eclipsed by scientific fascination, sidetracking him. “Teleportation? How does it work? Is it alien?” Then he looked shrewdly over to the mercenary. “How did _you_ get ahold of something like that? Did you steal it from Reed?”

“It’s mine, scout’s honor. Friend out in Cali made it for me.” After a moment of silence he added, “And no, you can’t have a look at it.”

“How does it work?” Peter repeated, still fixated.

“Beats me,” Deadpool shrugged. “Doesn’t work that well outside of preprogrammed coordinates, either. Liable to bust it if I keep trying to use it to get places that aren’t preprogrammed… which right now is just my house and the hotel. That, or it’ll just splinch me between the two locations.”

“Then why would you just use it all—all willy-nilly like that?” Peter asked in complete bafflement.

“Because I was trying to surprise you, duh!” Deadpool said with a flap of his hands.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re insane?”

“Oh, I’m sure it's been mentioned once or twice,” came the breezy response. Peter rolled his eyes, glad for the discretion his mask provided. “So, what are we doing?”

“Stakeout, remember? There’s a shipment coming into this dock in the next couple of hours,” said Peter. “Hence, y’know, the duck-and-cover routine.”

“No doy.” When Deadpool rolled his eyes, his mask somehow managed to show it. “I _mean_ , what exactly are we looking for? Do we have a description of the package? Any of the workers? Are we going to allow them to make the exchange? Is this strictly an eyes-only mission? What’s the plan afterwards? How am I supposed to help with the stakeout if I don’t have all the deets, Webs?” he rattled off.

The young hero was actually surprised for a moment at Deadpool’s sudden focus and the barrage of detail-oriented questions. Well, the man was purported to be one of the best mercenaries in the business. Peter supposed he had to have _some_ skills other than murder hoboing his way through a job.

“Valid points,” acknowledged Peter begrudgingly. “This is off-schedule for Oscorp’s standard supply shipments, but the cargo is mostly new lab and server equipment, so that makes sense.”

“You’re welcome,” Deadpool interrupted.

“Yes, most likely because of the damage _somebody_ did to the below-ground labs earlier this week,” Peter continued, begrudgingly glad of the opportunity but knowing the cost was unacceptable. People had died in that blast. Not that Deadpool had cared. Hell, that had been the merc’s _intention_. And there it was, right on time: the reminder of just why he kept the mutant at arm’s length no matter how funny or muscular he was. Peter couldn’t even keep up with Deadpool well enough to protect people from him. How was he supposed to trust the guy, team-up or no team-up?

He shook his head, annoyed with himself for relaxing around the mercenary and refusing to allow the interjection derail him further. The sooner they got through this, the sooner he could part ways with this crazy jerk and do what he could to make up for whatever damage allowing him to stay in the city would cause. “Based on the invoices I pulled from their system, we know that the shipment should be about 3 cargo containers worth of equipment. Anything more than that, or that gets added to a container at the last second, is something we need to know about.”

Deadpool tapped his chin with one gloved finger. “But how do you know that there’s even going to be anything? If I was a supervillain—”

“Implying you’re not one already,” Peter griped under his breath.

“First of all, rude. You agreed to team up with me, Webs! And I’ve apologized like seven times already for trying to kill you that time,” the mercenary pouted, flailing his hands. “As I was saying, if I were a supervillain, I wouldn’t exactly be shipping server racks with ingredients for shady biomedical experiments. So what gives?”

“Dock supervisors don’t normally make enough money to buy a brand new RAM 1500. Four-wheel drive with the full-body blackout package. Oh, and did I mention he paid in full? Cash, of course.” Peter nodded toward the fenced-off employee parking behind the building. “So that was a bit of a hint.”

“It’s fair cop,” the merc commented in a horrible Cockney accent.

Peter snorted. “I still can’t pinpoint who’s directing the operation though. They’re using fairly high-level clearance to order what should be an average shipment, but it’s not telling me a lot else.”

“Didn’t Doctor Storm say this looked like the handiwork of ol’ Greeny McHalloweenie?” Deadpool asked. “Maybe he’s just back to his old tricks.”

“Definitely not,” Peter said with a firm shake of his head. Someone had spoofed Harry’s account to make the rush order, not that Peter was going to tell that to the mercenary. Norman was definitely dead, and Harry was still convalescing and partially amnesiac, last he’d heard. It clearly hadn’t been the old Goblin up to new tricks. The real question was whether this was someone else inside Oscorp, perhaps someone who had been involved in developing the Goblin formula who he’d missed the first time, or if Peter should be looking elsewhere.

“Why’s that? Makes sense to me.”

“It’s just not. Trust me.”

Deadpool waved a hand lazily. “Fine by me. On your head if people get hurt over it, not mine. It’s not like I’m getting paid extra to care.” Peter scowled at him, not caring that most of the expression was lost behind the fabric. “Get it, Webs? Because I’m not getting paid? Sheesh, tough crowd.” The last sentence was once again murmured into the air off to one side.

Finer details hashed out, the pair settled in to wait. After about a quarter of an hour, Peter’s anger and irritation with the mutant had simmered down to a manageable level. It was almost more annoying that Deadpool pushed his buttons without apparently trying, getting under his skin just as much when Peter found himself enjoying the merc’s company as when he acted like the cold-blooded assassin he was. Peter shook his shoulders out to dispel the train of thought and settled further into his crouch. It wasn’t worth his time.

Another forty-five minutes of (relative, considering the company) silence passed before Deadpool pulled a bunch of snacks and two Capri-Suns from his inexplicably bottomless utility belt pouches. The merc had a teleporter, so Peter supposed he really ought to suspend his disbelief and just accept that the guy apparently also had a real, live bag of holding—which was apparently so commonplace for him that he filled it with juice boxes.

“Cheez-Its?” he offered, holding a small bag of the crackers out to the webslinger. Peter gratefully, if somewhat gingerly, took the proffered snack.

“Uh… thanks,” he said. “I didn’t actually think you’d bring food with you.”

“I promised snacks, I brought snacks.” Deadpool shrugged. “No, it’s not that odd that I remembered. _I’m_ not making it creepy, _you’re_ making it creepy!” He swatted over his left shoulder. The outburst should have had Peter edging away, but instead he found himself bursting into laughter that was quickly muffled behind a gloved hand.

“You’re so weird,” he observed with a shake of his head once he got himself under control. That seemed to throw the mercenary off.

“Uh, thanks. I think.” The blank whites of the man’s mask bored into Peter’s mask hard enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up with a mild frisson of spidey sense.

No, wait. The sensation grew as activity at the dock in front of the warehouse they were staking out increased. Peter perked up, cheesy crackers forgotten. “It’s time!”

“Great, let’s go.” Deadpool made to pull his katanas from their sheaths, but Peter tugged him back down behind the parapet once again.

“No, not yet. It’s time for the shipment. We need to count how many cargo containers there are, and see if we recognize anyone or anything. My plan was to go interrogate the dock supervisor afterwards to avoid drawing more suspicion.”

The mercenary instantly relaxed. “Well why didn’t you say so? Now I understand why you wanted me here.”

The latter statement didn’t quite parse, but Peter ignored that in favor of focusing his enhanced vision on the top loader currently stacking a couple of shipping containers onto an Oscorp flatbed truck. Deadpool grumbled something about “spider vision” before pressing a pair of military surplus binoculars to the eyes of his mask.

They didn’t have long to wait before the small shipment was transferred. Peter noticed a few smaller crates being loaded into the cab of the truck at the last moment. He elbowed Deadpool sharply in the ribs and pointed wordlessly to the transaction occurring below. The merc nodded in apparent understanding.

The moment the truck drove through the gate and out of sight, Peter was scaling down the corrugated metal and skirting along the wall. After a few patrols together, he shouldn’t have been surprised when Deadpool caught up to him by dropping to the ground a few feet ahead with a horrible bone-crunching sound. The taller man straightened quickly, shaking out an ankle.

“Woof, nothin’ wakes a guy up like a few shattered metatarsals, let me tell ya!” he stage-whispered through a wide grin before gesturing that Peter should continue to lead the way. Unsettled, Peter weaved through stacks of cargo containers between the warehouse they’d used as a vantage point and the shipping office, sticking to blindspots and shadows as much as he could. After the shock of his initial landing, the merc was a surprisingly silent tail.

Once they’d made it near the office, it was simpler to just reach around the corner and web over the security cameras by the main doors than to bother with finding another entry point or hoping they were wireless and trying to hack into the feed. Peter quickstepped to the entrance, Deadpool hot on his heels.

\- - -

“Well hey there… Dave,” Peter greeted the dock supervisor brightly as he entered the back office, glancing at the name embroidered in a thick script on the man’s jumpsuit. “Can I call you Dave? I was really hoping you could answer a couple questions for me. Do you have a minute, guy?”

The Alpha squared off against Peter and opened his mouth, beginning to stand up out of the swiveling chair he’d been slouched in when the hero entered. Peter was willing to bet that without his mask filtration, the man’s pheromones would have had his own aggression and anxiety spiking in response.

“Now listen, I know you costumed weirdos think you’re the lord’s gift to the rest of us, but I’ll have _you_ know—” Deadpool, who had been lagging behind Peter since they entered the building, chose that moment to stalk into the room, abristle with weapons and somehow clearly glaring behind his mask.

The dark-haired man’s—Dave’s—mouth gaped momentarily in an impressive rendition of a startled koi fish before snapping shut. He practically threw himself backward into the chair, rolling it several inches away from the shabby laminate desk. The back of Peter’s neck and shoulders tingled as the hulking mercenary moved to flank him, until he was barely in the hero’s peripheral vision but still very clearly blocking the room’s only exit. It was honestly a little dramatic for Peter’s taste, but maybe the theatrics would actually get the dockworker talking a little more quickly.

“C’mon, Davey. Why don’t you help my good pal Spidey out here?” Deadpool sneered.

Dave’s jaw tightened as the merc’s attention directed toward him. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say.”

“Oh, double negative! You know what that means!” Peter interjected with forced cheer, trying to deescalate the mounting tension in the room. The Alpha wouldn’t cooperate if he was too angry or frightened, and Peter would rather he gave them information because he was actually convinced to help rather than forced.

“Wuzzat?” the dock supervisor asked suspiciously.

“That means you do have something to say to me after all!” the hero crowed. Behind him, Deadpool snorted loudly. “Hey, I just want to know about the box that just went to Oscorp.”

Dave’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion. “Gonna hafta be more specific. They had three containers, not one. Anyways, that shipping manifest is confidential.”

“Not the cargo containers,” Peter clarified. “The smaller box that was handed off and went into the cab.”

The man’s face smoothed back over into a blank mask of his own. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said flatly.

“Okay, I’m officially bored with the tough guy patter!” interjected Deadpool. “This is taking too long.” He brushed past Peter and made his way around the desk, brisk walk dropping into a swagger as he rounded the piece of furniture. Dave scooted his chair back minutely.

“One more time, just for kicks. What’s in the bo-ox?” he asked in a voice that was probably supposed to be an impression of Brad Pitt.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Dave repeated staunchly, sliding his swivel chair back a couple of inches.

“Well, you guys heard ‘im! Your Honor,” this directed at Peter, “let the record show that I asked nice first.” Peter’s spidey sense went from a background tingle to a sharp, warning pain so quickly that he was briefly disoriented.

That was just enough enough time for the mercenary to pull a wicked-looking blade from its sheath, kick a heel out to pivot the occupied chair closer to the desk, and stab the knife into the cheap particleboard—right through the Alpha’s hand.

The dock supervisor’s eyes bugged out and his face drained of color in the brief millisecond he had to take in the wound. The pinned hand twitched involuntarily, bursting the bubble of stillness, and he screamed, voice rough and cracking. The crotch of his jumpsuit darkened, and the smell of urine quickly permeated the air.

“You know, just one time I would love to stick someone’s hand to a desk with a knife _without_ them pissing their pants,” Deadpool commented conversationally. “Really, where’s the professionalism?”

Peter gaped in horror at the blood welling up slowly around the knife wound, the coppery smell mixing with the tang of uric acid in the air so thickly he could almost taste it.

“What the _f—heck_ are you doing?” he demanded. He seized Deadpool by the bicep and strong-armed him away from the dock supervisor, ignoring the urge to slap a hand over his neck in response to the fresh zing of his spidey sense.

The blank panda eyes of Deadpool’s mask met Peter’s reflective white lenses. “My job. You brought me along so you wouldn’t have to get your hands dirty. What, you want to wait outside or something?”

Peter’s grip on the mercenary’s arm tightened. “Your job? I invited you on this stakeout because we’re working together! Jesus!” He scrubbed viciously at the back of his neck, which was still tingling like mad.

“Oh. Huh.” Deadpool paused for a moment, seeming engrossed in another one of his interminable internal dialogues.“My bad. So that guy’s still bleeding all over the table. You want to do something about that or?” Deadpool asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Peter glared at him. “Oh don’t look at me like that! It’s not even a serrated knife.”

The young hero shoved past the mercenary, heedless of his sense’s low tingle. The dock supervisor had passed out while the two of them had been arguing. He put careful pressure on the man’s wounded hand, pulling the knife free and webbing the hole shut. He’d have some serious scar tissue, but nothing fatal.

Peter gestured at the unconscious man. “Not only was that horrible and probably traumatizing, this guy is in no condition to tell anyone anything now, even if I could persuade him that we were good guys and _not_ murderous psychopaths,” he lectured. “Now I’m going to have to do a lot of legwork to make up for it, and we might not be able to find out anything until there’s another shipment. _If_ there’s another shipment.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have the moral high ground, Anakin. I get it.” Deadpool waved dismissively as he followed the hero out of the building and past the still-blinded security cameras. After almost a minute of silence (probably some kind of record for the mercenary), he started up again. “Real quick though, while we’re on the subject.”

“What?” Peter snapped as he climbed the chain-link fence around the outside of the industrial lot.

“Say what you will about my tactics, they work,” retorted Deadpool. “So I stab a few civilians, maybe end up with a little non-Nazi collateral damage when I’m blowing up a Hydra base. At least when I take someone down, they stay down. T-Ray doesn’t count, he was literally powered by dark magic and vengeance.” The latter sentence, utter nonsense to Peter, was hissed over the Omega’s shoulder.

“What exactly is your point?” Peter asked through gritted teeth, darting into a nearby alley to climb a less-exposed wall.

The merc climbed up the fire escape after him. “How many people have died because none of you hero types will get blood on your hands to just stop someone like Massacre permanently? Because you wouldn’t play hardball with the Goblin for how long? Or how about all the times you’ve tried to talk down Ock from his latest scheme instead of ripping those tentacles right off him?”

Making it to the top of the building during Deadpool’s rant, Peter vaulted over the parapet and whirled to face him. Since the man had mentioned the Green Goblin in the midst of his lecture, Peter had felt his anger and adrenaline skyrocket.

“And what would you know about making those choices?” he growled, gripping the concrete so tightly he could feel it crumbling beneath his fingers. “When have you ever exercised self-control to protect innocent people from becoming unnecessary casualties? You’ve never _needed_ to save someone instead of killing them!”

“You’re right,” Deadpool responded coolly. “Because I understand that there’s no point. I’m not the shitty Alpha-wannabe who goes on about how _good_ and _righteous_ I am, then starts growling and gnashing his teeth down at the Omega who dares to disagree with you.”

“That’s _not_ what is happening here,” Peter shot back defensively, tightening his jaw.

“Sure, Webs,” the mercenary dismissed, his tone calm and even. “And I’m sure you’re a totally chill, well-adjusted Beta who totally doesn’t have a pathetic Alpha-envy complex under that mask. All that time you spend swinging around the city in spandex totally isn’t to make up for your absolute failure in the rest of your life.”

Peter snarled wordlessly in the Omega’s direction, lips curled and fangs bared, hidden as they still were beneath his mask. More concrete crumbled beneath his fingers. Deadpool laughed.

Peter shoved himself backward and turned away. He was so riled up that his own pheromones probably would have made him feel sick if he wasn’t wearing the suit to contain and filter them. He ran to the opposite end of the roof and leapt off.

\- - -

The Alpha found himself tearing northeast across the low skyline, heading instinctually toward Forest Hills and safe haven in his distress. He slowed intentionally, vaulting high and letting himself drop just a few feet above the sidewalk before catching himself and thwipping past. His new trajectory turned a little further south, toward another industrial area of the city.

Even once he’d stopped making his way through the city at full speed, the hero found himself unable to catch his breath, Deadpool’s accusations ringing in his ears. He put work in every day, talking people down from violent situations, avoiding leaving someone for the cops to pick up unless he didn’t see another choice. He made the choice not to kill because he had made a promise to Uncle Ben to live up to his responsibilities, because he knew that sometimes people—people like Harry or Curt—really could get better. He wasn’t some naive kid or testosterone-driven Alpha making these choices, or, or some angry _Beta_ with a chip on his shoulder.

Peter’s fingers itched even as he flipped from web to web, limbs thrumming with anxious energy, breath still coming in pants. Still rattled, still unable to concentrate on anything but the mercenary’s words and reminder of how he’d failed so many people, starting with Gwen and Ben. He dropped to the ground in a mostly-deserted part of the industrial zone, once the buildings got too low to easily swing between. Empty this early in the day probably meant abandoned. Good.

A few blocks in, he found what he was looking for. The precast concrete panels of the building were already spalling, and the “for sale” signs had been there so long that they’d become just as weather-faded and graffiti-tagged as the rest of the building. A side door was forced open easily enough, and he slipped inside with clenched fists and another attempt at a deep breath.

\- - -

It might have only been fifteen minutes since Peter had walked into the abandoned warehouse, or it might have been hours. He was still unable to catch his breath or soothe the harsh growl reverberating through his chest, but at least now the buzzing under his skin was dulled by the ache in his fists and feet. He’d managed to do some respectable damage to a few interior walls and one or two pieces of leftover manufacturing equipment before his racing thoughts were loud enough to overpower the sound of screeching metal.

“Spidey? Spider-Man? Helloooo?” Alright, apparently something besides his own loud thoughts had caught his attention after all. His spidey sense was still so oversensitive from distress that he’d been intentionally suppressing the normal cue that there was someone else nearby.

“Hey, Spidey? I’m pretty sure I saw you come in he—” The voice cut short as Deadpool walked into the manufacturing space. Peter looked up from the twisted pieces of metal heaped around him to eye the mercenary. “Ummm, how ya doing over there, Webs? Okay?” he asked warily.

The cautious tone, strange out of the mouth of the brash, overly-crass man, prompted Peter to more fully assess the wreckage surrounding him. He looked around at the rather impressive heap of rubble, absently wiping concrete dust off his gloves. When Deadpool took a hesitant step forward, the hero’s head jerked up and he backed up automatically, his body in tune with his overwrought spidey sense now that he wasn’t actively ignoring it.

The mercenary halted and held his hands up. “Right, it’s clobbering time. Reading you loud and clear. I’ll stay on this side of the scrap heap. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know if this was already trashed when you got here, would you?”

“What do you want?” Peter rasped, finally finding his voice. “Did you follow me?” If the merc was able to tail Spider-Man that easily, it would be one more thing for Peter Parker to worry about once the mask was off.

“Bold of you to assume I’d need to follow you when I can just follow the #SpideySpotting tag on Twitter while you’re on the job.” Deadpool waved a rather battered-looking phone at the hero.

Peter grunted and shrugged one shoulder. “Alright. So why are you here, Deadpool? You made your point on my inadequate performance of both hero work and gender quite clearly.”

“Yeah. About that,” said Deadpool. Peter waited, expectant and still but for the clenching and unclenching of his aching fists. Finally, the merc spoke again. “Why’d you get all worked up over it, anyway? No one counts my opinion for shit, least of all you.” He leaned against one of the few workbenches still intact with exaggerated casualness.

“You really have no idea, do you?” the exhausted hero growled lowly. The Omega mercenary flinched minutely, and Peter automatically backed up a few steps, finding himself halting against a steel support beam. As he spoke, he hauled his tired body up to cling to the beam, well out of katana reach if Deadpool’s strange mood shifted again and he decidedly to reintroduce Peter to “the Olsen twins.”

“Do you know what happens if someone like me isn’t careful all the time, Deadpool? What can happen if I don’t keep myself in check?” Peter continued. He gestured at the rubble below. “Look at this. What do you think I could do to a person without even trying? Without even meaning to?”

Deadpool cocked his head, looking puzzled. “What does that have to do with—”

“You talk a big game about how I do my work for someone who won’t touch the whole ‘hero’ game himself,” Peter cut him off. “I knew the Goblin, and I should have been able to save him. If I were better at this, people wouldn’t have gotten hurt because they got in the way of Spider-Man’s enemies.”

“You know, that sounds really weird when you say it with your mask on and absolutely no context as to your quote-unquote ‘secret identity,’” the merc interjected. Peter ignored the interruption again as the bubble of pent-up fear and guilt popped and washed over him.

“Clearly I’m just not going to live up to your standards. You’ll just have to live with that, I guess, because my standards are higher. I have to try to save everyone. I have to be so careful with _everyone_ ,” Peter emphasized.

“Live with it, huh?” Deadpool raised an eyebrow.

Peter went on, “We don’t have to keep working on this case together. I have enough information now that I think I’ve got it handled. You don’t have to worry about trying to do things my way anymore. Just leave my city.”

“Are you done with the growling and the ranting?” Deadpool asked, then waited to see if Peter had anything to add. After a few moments of silence, he continued. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I just spent the last hour and a half tracking down your stupid, perfect Spider-ass. I _may,_ just possibly, have made some incorrect assumptions about why you brought me with you, and then responded to you with a _little_ bit more vitriol than necessary. Maybe. A teensy bit.”

“A teensy bit,” Peter repeated, brow furrowed. “Overreacted.”

“Yeah, Webs, overreacted. You’re a pretty good little bug. So, we good?”

Peter’s whole body sagged back against the steel. “I might have also… overreacted.”

“Great!” The mercenary clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Sounds like we’re done here, unless you want to bust anymore walls up.”

“I think I’m good. I guess I’ll see you for patrol later this week?”

“Sure. I’ll have my people call your people. Unless, uh, you want to come over, have a couple pineapple and olive pizzas, hop on the Xbox? We can play some Cuphead, take the real ultimate test of teamwork,” Deadpool rambled.

“I’m, uh, I’m good, actually,” Peter said, faltering a little even as he spoke. “Nothing personal. Raincheck?”

The merc’s shoulders slumped the tiniest bit, and he crossed his arm. “Oh. Sure thing,” he said flatly, recovering quickly and already turning to walk out. “See you for patrol.”

Peter shot a web to catch and slow the larger man, who sidestepped it deftly, but at least paused and turned back to face him. “Look, I mean it. I’m sorry,” Peter sighed. “But I really can’t. It’s not a _you_ thing. I’m not going to be calm enough to unstick from this pillar for, like, an hour.” That wasn’t strictly true, but he was still way too overstimulated and upset to play nice, especially in whatever disaster passed for a home to Deadpool.

The words were at least enough to mollify him for now. “Yeah, yeah, alright. But it’s going to start getting weird when you run out of excuses, Spidey.”

“I’m not—” Peter began to protest.

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you. See you around, Webs.” The merc finally left, and Peter breathed deeply. First time he’d worked with anyone other than the Four and not ended a fight feeling like he needed to break something, and even teaming up with Johnny tending to get a little, well, stormy. Heck, Peter actually felt more relaxed, a little less like he was ready to jump out of his own skin.

“Yeah, I don’t have time to unpack all of that,” he muttered, dropping his head back down onto his knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had grad school flashbacks while writing the beginning of this chapter.
> 
> Thanks to the endlessly-patient [dropthebeet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DropTheBeet), [gemjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjules), and [marvelslittleshits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelslittleshits/pseuds/marvelslittleshits) for their amazing work as beta readers!


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